


the weddings of sansa stark

by flappergirlsfolly



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Historical, Alternate Universe - Middle Earth, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Different lifetimes, Implied/Referenced Abuse, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Violence
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-11-04
Updated: 2015-02-03
Packaged: 2018-02-24 01:46:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 24
Words: 25,488
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2563736
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/flappergirlsfolly/pseuds/flappergirlsfolly
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>all times sansa was married in her different lifetimes</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. joffrey

1.

She is enveloped in a wide circle of tulle, large enough to be delightfully ostentatious, but not so big that it looks like something from My Big Fat Stonecrow Wedding. (Surprisingly, it’s not as big as what she wore for the photoshoot, which tumbled over an eight-meter diameter of floor when she was kneeling)

At the dais beside her, Joff smirks his wormy lips, the ones that smothered hers as he tossed aside her Stark maidencloak. Curious, she watches the glowing golden locks that tickle his forehead, the way the burgundy brocade waistcoat wrinkles over his chest.

Swarms of well wishers clamber up to the table before them, one after the other, bearing gifts and smiling. (None of them are her family.) She admires their generosity and thanks them all with big smiles, but Joff snaps his fingers at them to leave before she can speak.

Later, they dance, the wide swathes of tulle frothing around them artistically. (He almost slips on them twice, and she feels like she’ll pay for it later, even if it is his own mother who is making her wear it) His fingers claw at her back, like the trigger of a bomb that _just isn’t going off_ and the anticipation is killing her.

When they cut the cake, the gold beaded flowers stitched onto the bodice of her dress (and scatter down sweetly over the mass of skirts) catch on the tablecloth and nearly topple the five golden tiers. The enormous ring that marks her as his carves a long dint in the icing as the knife goes down, and the long chains that dangle from her ears keep getting stuck in the large lion choker that weighs heavily on her collarbones.

Also, the hairdresser pulled her beautiful auburn locks so tightly back from her forehead that morning that she nearly cries periodically.

(Not the way she cries after the bedding ceremony, when Joffrey snores and her arms bleed from his scratches)


	2. sandor

2.

She buys a new blue suit for the occasion, a little white pillbox hat and a new clutch and pumps. Sandor wears the same tattered suit he has owned since 1948, and meets her on a street corner with a little poesy of flowers.

“C’mon Little Bird.” He rasps at her, and she takes his elbow. They meet an begrudging Arya and her young man Gendry outside the church, right on time (thankfully) for the little twenty minute slot they’d marked at the towering church.

“You’re not going to burst into flame.” She teases him, as he looks dubiously up at the cathedral.

They’re married within minutes, Arya and Gendry as witnesses, and they emerge grinning onto the steps like something from a golden Hollywood picture. It’s lovely when they eat lunch, drink champagne, and watch Arya get giddy with her first glass.

But the days turn into weeks, then months, and the years clunk by as she wears her apron and scrubs the stove and greets him at the door each night with a beer in hand and a soft kiss.

Ten years later, she rips off her brassiere and tosses it into the burning oil can with the other women in their building. He watches from their apartment window, the clunky wooden clock Jeyne Westerling sent them obscuring the lower half of his face.

It’s the freest she has ever felt, even though the distance between her and Sandor grows.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> SanSan shippers- don't hate me! They still love each other.


	3. pod

3.

She marries Podrick in a sweet little ceremony beneath the weirwood tree. Having taken her mother, father and brother’s place as the ruler of Winterfell, she runs around like a maniac trying to re-erect her ancient family home from the destruction that Theon’s delinquents caused.

Thankfully, it leaves approximately no time to dwell on all the death that pains her to the bone.

So when she sees him, sitting in his unhealthily dark office, the glowing computer illuminating his exhausted face, she smiles softly. She had barely believed it when Brienne, Podrick and Jaime smashed through Petyr’s front door. Her ex-husband’s assistant, who followed her from King’s Landing to the Eyrie, to Winterfell.

“You’ll do.”

He looks up at her, the customary redness ruddying his face.

“I- wh- ghum- milady?”

“I said you’ll do. Should we get married?”

His jaw drops, the pen slipping form his hand and clattering to the floor. The ceremony was short and sweet. She walks by herself into the godswood, in the same white trailing silk her mother had worn twenty-five years ago. The blue winter roses nestle between them, but she only has eyes for his beaming face.

Arya snaps pictures and Rickon throws cooked rice at them (she will strangle him when she stops smiling). Jon grins at her, his face startlingly gleeful, while his girlfriend Ygritte laughs and puffs confetti into his face.

She loves Podrick because he holds her hand.


	4. tyrion

4.

He finds her on the rich red carpet of Lannister Grande, in the endless, disappearing line of room-dotted corridors. Her blood smears the bathroom tiles, where Boros and Meryn smacked her while Joffrey cackled, and her gown is clutched to her body in shreds.

He and Bronn try everything they can think of, from extortion to secretly smuggling her back North to her family, and none of it works. At long last, it’s the only solution: mostly because he’s the only Lannister whose eyes she doesn't want to claw out and it satisfies the press who have snapped them together too many times already.

She wears opal white with lilac lace, her hair spiraling down her back. She knows she should kneel when he tries to drape the Lannister cloak over her- after all; he’s being so unbelievably kind. But the idea of becoming a Lannister is so repugnant to her that she doesn’t lower for him.

Still, they don’t have sex, and end up living in a chalet in Napa.

When she turns twenty one, as well as inviting Marg and Loras over to take her out to party, the doorbell rings and her family is standing on the doorstep.

She kisses him properly for the first time that night.

It’s not their last.


	5. jon

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1\. I had a request to write Sansa's wedding to Jon. So I've changed the title as five weddings won't fit any more.   
> 2\. Feel free to send me requests- probably should have prefaced that earlier  
> 3\. Sorry for my lack of updates, I had exams.  
> 4\. Enjoy the wedding to Jon

5.

Robb is _always_ her knight, but she’s got no idea where on earth he is. She hammers on his bedroom door and wails his name, already dressed in the princess costume daddy bought her when he last went to King’s Landing.

“You’re late! You said we’d play knights and ladies as soon as Hannah Montana finished and the Suite Life of Zack and Cody is already half way through!”

Jon’s door cracks open behind her, and his head pokes out.

“He’s gone with Theon into town.”

She doesn’t want to (it’s so unladylike in public), but she can feel her face squinching up, and before she can help it- “

Uh, no, no! Don’t, um, cry. Here, do you want me to play with you?” “No!” she shouts, stomping her foot and barreling down the corridor.

She slams her bedroom door behind her and sits on her bed. No sooner does her bottom hit the mattress, does she realise how mean that was. He was trying to be nice- and a difference prince is better than no prince after all.

After he pride is reasonably assured, she stomps back down to his bedroom- but he’s not in there, so she drags Robb’s sword and triangular hat down the stairs and shoves them to him in the kitchen.

“I’m sorry.” She snapped. “Now come on, will you?”

Two hours- and one dragon flight later (Robb always slays them)- they exchange pipecleaner rings in the garden.

Mummy calls them in for dinner and Sansa whispers a breathy “Thank you” in Jon’s ear. She runs to the dining table, but not before he can tuck a pretty blue wildflower into her hair.


	6. jaime

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> tacky wedding time!

6.

He’s not happier about it than she, but as neither of them asked for this, they decide to have a little revenge.

“Wheeeeeee!” her new husband squeals as the swinging chandelier tosses him across the room. He lands with a drunken giggle on the leopard print tablecloth that a Tyrell or Sandsnake had long since flung to the floor.

It hadn’t been Jaime that had comforted her when they’d killed her father, when Robb and Mother had died or even when Joffrey beat her (Gods, that felt so long ago). She doesn’t want him because she doesn’t love him- forget his bastard of a father, homicidal, sociopathic sister and his reputation for killing kings.

But with her entire family dead and missing for months (except for the crackly phone call she managed with Jon before the ceremony), when Tywin sat her down and threatened her claim to the North unless she married Jaime, it was easier to give in.

He didn’t wanted to marry her because of a woman named Brienne with eyes like the ocean, and that’s just fine by Sansa.

“HUBBY!” she laughs as she clambers over the head table in her sparkly white minidress and patent leather boots, snorting champagne out of her nose. “You hit the table!”

He chuckles again, from where he lies sprawled on the carpet, a creepy horror film haunted-child like giggle ( _“eeheeeheeeheeeee”_ ) and points up at her, stumbling across the dance floor.

“Wifey!”

“We gotta cut the- cut the cake.”

“Nonononoh! We need ta dance to the banjos first!”

“Ooh yeah!” After a burbling conversation with the DJ, the court members and leaders of the Seven Kingdoms dance the Best of Banjos, at the wedding of the power couple of the Westeros (together they own at least 60 percent of the country).

So they laugh hysterically as her new father in law hisses at them about decorum and public image and the legacy and _Lannisters don’t do this or that_. Because under the strobe lights that now adorn the ceiling of the Red Keep, they knock back shots and gawp at the enormous diamond on her finger and eat the wedding cake with Tywin’s face on it, there are no wars or taxes or allegiances or dead family members.


	7. aegon

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sansa/aegon, as requested

7.

“My Queen.”

He looks exactly as he did the day he named her his Queen of Love and Beauty. The sun beats down on his silver hair, graces the curves of his finely boned face with a gentle glow and makes his violet eyes glitter from within their own depths.

“My King.”

She had thought him a monster, an opportunist who took his aunt’s dragons the moment her body hit the waves of Blackwater Bay. He had thought her a vision in violet.

(She nearly didn’t marry him, if that’s all he thought she was)

They share a knowing smile from the corners of their eyes, and tangle hands beneath the table.

Her dress matches his eyes, sweeping down five of the altar steps in the sept, sleeves so long that they drag along the floor. Pale green embroidery and glass beads match the luscious greenery that litters the new keep of King’s Landing, after Cersei’s final strike.

“Do you think Robb would have approved?” she asks Jon, when he mounts the dais with his wife, to give their good wishes.

“Who cares? It ain’t his husband.” Ygritte cries, and Jon elbows her with a tender smile.

“They all would have.” He says softly, and she furrows her brow.

“Are you sure? How do you know?”

“I- I just do.”

“Jon, don’t tell me that if you’re just saying it to make me happy.”

“I’m not! I promise- I know, I can just see it.”

She frowns, but does not press further.

Later, when the sky has darkened to black and the lanterns burn brightly, Jon looks up from Ygritte’s bulging stomach, smooth beneath his palm.

“How do you reckon that?” she prods, as the new King and Queen dance, her auburn hair trailing in swathes over his arm.

“I don’t want to scare her with the truth. Because she stopped believing in songs and fairytales.” He says, before leaning down and brushing his lips over their unborn child.


	8. roose

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay  
> 1\. this is not great (but I wanted to do something funny where Sansa is sassy)  
> 2\. I have had some requests for the Sansa/Willas tagged. As that's my favourite Sansa pairing, it was originally intended to be fifth wedding, but I wanted to try and get it right. IT IS COMING, I promise :)

8.

“Bloody shitting buggering hells!”

He looked up from where he was fiddling with the straps of his riding boots, eyebrow raised.

“Something wrong?”

“Your sodding son is what’s wrong!”

“Ramsay?”

“No, the other eighteen children you have running around the Dreadfort. _Yes Ramsay!_ ”

“What’s the matter with him now?”

“He introduced himself to Father and- oh Gods, I can’t even-“ She collapsed face first on the bed for a long moment, before sitting up abruptly and continuing. “He said _‘Grandfather! My apologies, is that too forward? With you being the Lord father of my lovely new mother-‘_ ”

“Seven hells.”

“Darling, I-“

At that moment, however, the door battered open, revealing her raging brothers and father, Lady Stark, whose face was boiling like a thunderstorm, leading the charge.

She hardly had time to blink before Arya and Robb had leaped toward Roose, with Jon barely keeping them back with a hand on each shoulder.

In the background, her parents were shouting in a confusingly complicated rhythm.

“-took my daughter to bed-“

“-no consideration-“

“-innocence-“

“-thrice her age-“

“-propriety-“

“-banish you to the Shadowlands-“

“Whereas if you’d remained in Winterfell rather than charging your garrison of a family into my home, you’d know that I had sent a raven some weeks ago, asking for her hand in marriage.” He interrupted, in a bored drawl. 

“What?” she squawked, floundering in the sea of bedclothes that had been upset during the skirmish, “Was I to have no say in this?”

“Marriage?” her father growled, “Gods, if it’s a marriage you want, it’s a marriage you’ll damn well have.”

And that was how she became Lady Bolton of the Dreadfort, dragged to the Godswood in her daygown and frizzing hair.

(She did have their marriage annulled, some ten years later, but then married him again for kicks another three after that.)


	9. theon

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for your comments and requests! They really make my day.

9.

They had two weddings.

The first, she was seventeen and he was twenty-three. As Mr Poole and his four remaining daughters huddled into the mortuary, where sounds of abject despair shuddered out, she and Theon remained.

They sat opposite each other on the blue plastic seats in the hallway. Some of the beauty he had radiated before Ramsay Bolton still remained, his dark hair and fine cheekbones. (She knew that at least three of his teeth where false, two fingers were missing beyond the knuckle and four nails had been taken- she hadn’t seen his feet, but that was about it for physical damage. His only balm for the demons that lay behind his eyes was dead.)

But they locked each other’s gazes, and simply stared.

Flurries of conversation, an avalanche of information and understanding passed between them, as they remained in silence.

(Because nobody really loved Jeyne like they did.)

_‘We’re coming to pick you up right now, honey, just sit tight.’_

“No, Mum, it’s- I’m- well. Yes. Theon’s going to take me home.”

_‘I really don’t think-‘_

“He needs someone.”

_‘What about what you need?’_

(Oh, nobody loved Jeyne like they did.)

His thuddering van pulled up outside the pawnshop, and they bought their rings.

She was still numb from shock and grief that was waiting to sink in, so it didn’t hurt when they lightly sliced the skin of their wrists and pressed them together. The rain that had been falling for three days now had lessened to a mellow shower, and droplets plopped rhythmically on the leaves of the heart tree as they slipped over the back fence and into its warm embrace.

“Ye are blood of my blood, and bone of my bone.

I give you my body, that we two might be one.

I give you my spirit, ‘til our life be done.”

_Nobody loved her like we do_ passed between them as they pressed their foreheads together.

* * *

Their second wedding was some years later, she was twenty-six and he was thirty-three.

Their kisses had grown more fevered since their days of obligatory pecks and forced ‘darlings’. Upon the Septon’s command, he paused (they’d been practicing since the first time he tried to dip her on his unbalanced feet and they had fallen to the floor) anxiously before leaning her back gently.

The white lace frothed behind her (with scalloped edges and little pearls on the neckline, she and Jeyne had decided on while pouring over Pinterest tags at the age of fifteen) as the occupants of the sept thundered their applause.

Lost in the din, they whispered together.

“Nobody loves her like we do.”


	10. tywin

10.

He never suspects it, because it has been there since the start.

“Lady Sansa.” He greeted her shortly, the first time she entered his solar in pale pink silk at the age of thirteen.

“Wife.” He greets her, at their wedding feast at Casterly Rock, when she meets him at the dais in tumbling folds of gold.

“Husband.” She replies curtly, smiling as requested, despite the ache of the weight of the jewels around her neck.

She drinks the arbour gold and eats the boar and venison and strawberries and oranges (heavenly). She dances with her new husband and her new grandchildren (Joffrey laughs cruelly, but Tommen is sweet), and a lord with dark hair that she pretends is her father.

Arya, slopped at the head table and uncomfortable in her silk gown, makes Sansa’s new husband slightly less grumpy as she winges and bothers him, and it is occasions like this that make her secretly glad of her sister’s spirit.

She bites her lip as Tywin grunts atop her that night. But within two moons, she is with child.

She births the most beautiful baby daughter, who does not make her husband smile.

A year and a half later, their heir arrives.

She loves her children, and feels slightly cold and calculating, as she makes sure that they are both healthy and happy before she strikes.

Not that there is much to strike at. She is simply sewing by the fire when her husband sits down to take his port, and begins to choke.

She glances up, but does nothing as he reaches out, knocking his plate off the table.

He calls out, and she laughs, because nobody except her will hear his broken shuddering gasps.

And finally, when he slides from his chair and begins to froth at the mouth, does she drop her needlework artistically, and begin to scream.

Her husband is dead, she is regent and her son is heir to the Westerlands, the North, and effectively the Reach and the Riverlands.

He never saw her spite, though, because he never saw it harden in her eye. (It has always been there.)


	11. robert

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am so taken with vengeful Sansa, I have to keep going! Sorry for the repetition

11.

Queen Cersei had been so graceful and beautiful, when they first visited Winterfell, and Sansa had been in awe of her splendor. (She’s not sure what happened in King’s Landing, but she wears mourning black until mother quietly tells her that it’s not appropriate and to stop)

But she is nonetheless delighted when mother and father take she, Bran and Arya to the capital on the King’s command. (Despite her stupid sister’s whining, she refuses to have her joy encroached upon)

For their welcoming feast, she dresses in the gown that Robb had given her fabric for as a leaving present, and her father nearly sheds a tear, claiming that she is the most beautiful maiden in the Seven Kingdoms.

It is also what his grace seems to think, when he eyes her up and down the way she sees Theon do.

The next morning, her father hastens across the throne room toward her before court comes into session (what can he possibly be upset about?), but before he can drag her and her mother away, Robert Baratheon announces that he and Sansa are going to be married.

Everything in her body seizes up because he is an awful, horrible man who burps and drinks and eats like a boar and had his wife executed and children sent to his brother in the Stormlands and he wants to make her his wife.

_‘He is not my prince, brother. Please come save me, I am so terribly scared. I do not think I can go on.’_ She sends the letter home to Robb, and rather than her beloved brother who played as her prince over their childhood, he sends her Jon.

“My queen.” He says, his voice dead and soulless as he kneels before the raised dais.

Beside her, Robert bellows and belches, and she feels like she fades into nothingness, in her pale grey silk. She still inflates with rage when she sees her bastard brother at her wedding.

“What are you doing here?” she hisses.

“Robb sent me to be your shield.”

“There’s no space in the Kingsguard!”

“That’s why he sent me to be your shield, not to be in the Kingsguard.”

“Aren’t you meant to be at the Wall?”

“I am glad my queen is aware of the events of the realm.” He mutters, and she feels like a fool when she remembers that the Watch has been closed and the men sent to all corners of the realm.

She accedes to allow him to stay (though she instantly regrets it as Arya sees him and slide tackles him in the middle of the open entertainment area, making her husband burst into hysterical laughter and Sansa cringes of embarrassment).

She feels pain like no other, worse than her moon blood when he beds her, three times that night, and it’s not beautiful and magical like she had always thought it would be, it’s horrible and she cries afterward.

She owns silk gowns and beautiful jewels and flower gardens and horses and tourneys are hosted in her name, to which she wears her tiara and sits high above everyone (except Robert).

She becomes with child six times in the next ten years, and births four. They have her husband’s hair and looks, but are more like her in person than their father. They hang off Jon’s ankles and call him ‘uncle Jon’, and it is the only time he smiles in the decade they are in the south.

Arya grows into a spirited young woman, skinny as a whip, but as Sansa becomes more like iron and her sister less dismissive, their angry bickering ends and is replaced by a silent harmony. (She grows more beautiful, too and their parents both name her as the image of Lyanna Stark. Sansa hates it because her aunt was only an innocent maiden with foolish dreams, as she had once been)

They are not the only ones who notice, she sees one evening. As Arya traipses into the feast beside Jon, pale grey silk hanging form her bony frame and dark hair trailing down her back, Robert lights up beside Sansa.

A little bit of her dies inside, when the crown at the next tourney is made of blue winter roses, and despite the fact that Ser Vallie has never spoken to her before, it inevitably ends up on her sister’s head.

(Robert says Lyanna’s name that night.)

It’s the day that she walks into their chambers and sees Arya and Robert taking tea on the terrace that she finally snaps.

They go riding the next day, and as Jon’s back is turned, she knocks him on the back of the head. Making sure he is breathing and not bleeding, she bunches her cloak behind his head and takes Longclaw from its scabbard, and approaches Robert where he is pissing.

“She is my sister,” she hisses, as the sword emerges bloody through his torso, “she is not yours to fuck, your hairy finger will not tear at her thighs as they have at mine. She is not your plaything, you grunting pig.”

“Sansa?” Jon asks, when he wakes. “Why are you- _you’re covered in blood!_ ”

“Come, Jon.” She says, helping him to his feet and gesturing to the ship waiting down the bushy embankment. “It is time to stop mourning your wildling lady. We’re heading to Braavos.”


	12. stannis

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is more of a history interpretation than a wedding fic. HEAVILLY influenced by Diana Gabaldon's series and TV show Outlander, this is about the Jacobite rising in 1745 and what happened after.   
> Some things to know:   
> 1\. Photography was not popular until the mid-late 19th century, but I have put it in here cause yolo  
> 2\. After the Jacobites (highlander followers of Charles Stuart, the would-be king) were defeated, the wearing of tartan was banned, as was the carrying of weapons. The country suffered from a series of famines and the former feudal-like system was practically abolished, meaning that emigration was incredibly high

12.

Sansa doesn’t care how she gets what she wants, but she just wants out.

She wants to leave Scotland, go to London and wear beautiful dresses with pearls and ribbons in her hair and see plays and walk about Mayfair with a lace parasol. She doesn’t want bearded bellowing Highlanders in their grey and white kilts, nor does she want to remain in Winterfell, especially with Robb gone to be educated in France with Jon, leaving she and her mother alone with Arya rolling around in the mud and Bran pirouetting from the slate tiles.

Which is why, when father’s old friend Lord Stannis is present after the recent Gathering, she perks herself up.

She is very sorry about the recent death of his wife, but she wants to leave the highlands so very badly.

She wears pale grey and white, embroidered with little flowers and snarling wolves, and the Stark tartan subtly around her waist, pinned with the clan brooch. The harpers play and the singer croons (they are rare, in the highlands, and she nearly can’t believe how lucky she is) and stern Stannis dances with her.

As they leave Scotland, they see two highlanders swinging from nooses, their blue and red kilts of her mother’s clan swaying dully in the breeze.

“Who did this?” she asks, shrilly, as she draws her horse to a sharp halt.

Stannis urges her on, to turn her head, but she won’t.

“The redcoats? This is not justice! This is murder!”

“It is the crown, so it is just.” Her husband tells her.

Pausing, she glances back at the sprawling green and steel scenery, then at the muddy colours running through the dead men’s’ kilts.

“Davos? And Matthos, isn’t it? These are my mother’s clansmen, and I would be most grateful to see them laid to rest.”

“My lady, we’ve a boat to catch.” Sir Davos says, eyeing her husband uncertainly.

“Do as my wife commands.” He says. “And do it quickly.”

* * *

London is exhilarating and breathtaking, at first. Despite her husband’s coldness, Lady Margaery (whom she meets at the theatre, one evening and they become fast friends despite the fact that she talked all through the narrative) shows her the fashionable teahouses and séances, dressmakers and riding stables. Sansa bedecks herself in embroidered corsetry and lace-bodiced gowns, and writes to her mother and brothers of how happy she is.

Until the horrifying news seeps under drawing room doors and into dinner parties that the highlanders are massing armies to rebel against the crown. And all of a sudden, the eyes and divert away from her at parties, the quickly smothered conversations and snide remarks about Stuarts all seem to fall into place.

But she holds her head high because she knows that her father never would, and for that she can be proud.

She nearly thinks that Stannis doesn’t notice- or he doesn’t care (causing him to kiss him impetuously one morning for sheer gladness), but she’s wrong.

“I’m being snubbed at Lords.” He said, his constant sternness not vacating him now.

“Because of you. They think I support Charles Stuart.”

“But you don’t!” she exclaims.

“I don’t, and neither does my father!”

“They don’t know that.”

“Well, they shouldn’t treat you so without knowledge, then.”

“Nonetheless, we can’t afford to be seen _Scottish_.”

Affronted, she draws her shoulders back and folds her arms.

“I’ll have you know how very hard I work on my enunciation-“

“Just in general. No letters, no tartan in your dresses, no brothers-“

“You can’t-“

“-until all of this is over.”

She wants to fight him, to shout and scream and claw at his face, but she wanted so badly to come here, that she doesn’t.

The whole awful affair is done in a month, though. A bloody slaughter on the field of Culloden, where the men of the Tully, Mormont, Glover, Dustin, Whent, Frey and Umber clans all meet their deaths.

(Margaery eyes the newspaper on the floor when she enters, and pats her gently on the back as she sobs, cooing loudly enough so the servants can hear about the strains of menstruation, and Sansa can barely think when she has loved her more)

It’s some ten years later, when portraits of Jon’s wild wife and children deck the walls beside Robb’s, Arya’s, her parents’ and her own, that she fully excavates her wardrobe for the first time since her marriage.

“I found this as well, milady,” her maid whispers, in a panicked daze, “it’s illegal now. Shall I have it burned?”

Sansa looks suspiciously at the covered bundle in the girl’s arms, and flings aside the sheet, though she knows full well what lies beneath.

The soft wool glows warmly beneath her fingers, the familiar pattern calling back instant memories of her childhood, her father’s men, cold Scottish mornings and a time when there wasn’t a little piece inside of her flailing to be free.

“No.” she says, taking the bundle forcefully, “give it to me.”

As she unpicks the banned Stark tartan, the heavy wedding dress it is attached to falls away; her shoulders feel lighter and lighter.

She lines her warmest cloak with the plaid, and fastens the Stark clan brooch to her only dress of grey and white. It shines brightly in the mirror, and she thinks of the hanged Tully men and their muddy kilts, of sweet dead Smalljon and the fierce Dacey. The Scottish moors reflect in the smoky silver, and despite the fact that her homeland is being garroted like a rabid dog; she feels a sense of defiant pride.

Stannis eyes it with disdain over dinner that evening, but before he can speak, she holds up her hand.

“Shut up, Stannis.” She snaps. “Just shut up.”


	13. margaery

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Something a bit amusing, seeing as the last few chapters have been more serious and spousal-murdery. Apologies for the… uh, chaos.

13.

She doesn’t care about flowers or balloons or Arya’s boyfriend’s leg, she just wants to marry Margaery.

But of course, with their families, that wasn’t going to be easy.

“Here’s the idea,” Marg says, one morning, “we don’t organize a big reception, no fancy dresses, no flowers, no cake-“

“Excuse me?”

She looks up, mortified.

“I thought you were okay with-“

“Well I’m not an animal! We’re having cake, you savage!”

Marg laughs and puffs a piece of glowing auburn fringe off Sansa’s face.

“Alright then, we get a cake. But anyway, we don’t tell our families until three days before it happens, so they have enough time to get here, but not enough to organize anything.”

“That sounds like the way to go, then.” She beams, before spontaneously tackling her back onto the mattress. “We’re getting married!” she shrieks.

So they go about their plan. Her parents descend into an immediate panic (“What do you mean the registry office? What about the heart tree?” and “Shut up, Ned! Get off the line; I’m trying to book plane tickets! _Three days, Sansa! Three days!_ ”) while the Tyrells… explode.

“WHAT DO YOU MEAN YOU’RE GETTING MARRIED IN THREE DAYS? IT TAKES THREE MONTHS TO GET AN APPOINTMENT WITH VERA WANG. HOW THE HELL AM I SUPPOSED TO ORDER IN A HUNDRED JADE VINES IN THREE DAYS? THEY COME FROM THE PHILLIPINES, MARGAERY, YOU INCONSIDERATE LITTLE COW-“

“Grandmother, calm down.”

“GIVE THE PHONE, GRANNY. SANSA! ARE YOU THERE? WHAT THE HELL IS THIS? I NEED TO BEAT YOU UP AT LEAST ONCE BEFORE YOU’RE ALLOWED TO MARRY MY SISTER!”

“Oh my god, Loras!” Sansa whines.

“THIS IS NOT OKAY, THIS IS NOT OKAY, MARGAERY YOU’RE YOUNGER THAN ME! THIS IS NOT FAIR YOU HAVE TO WAIT YOUR TURN- ACK! MOTHER GET OFF-“

“Oh, honey, this is wonderful!” Allerie cries, and Sansa nearly bursts into tears.

The morning of their wedding is spent in a blissful state of tranquility; Margaery does Sansa’s make up and Sansa fiddles expertly with Marge’s hair so it trickles down her back and frames her face (she is so beautiful).

Then there is a knock on the door.

About ninety balloons and a large rose trellis on a wheelie jack hit Sansa in the face.

“WHAT THE BLOODY HELL?”

“Hello Sansa,” Loras greets, voice muffled as his face is shoved against the wall of their building’s corridor. “Happy wedding!”

“Yeah.” Gendry mutters sullenly, sweating profusely from behind the trellis of endangered blue flowers. “Have a fucken magical day.”

“We’re actually off the registry office right now.” Marg says airily, floating to the door in her pale blue silk dress. “Can I just pop through?”

After a litany of swearing and curses, the fairly disheveled Sansa and Margaery make it to the street, Loras and Gendry struggling to keep up to them with their packages.

“Slow down!” Gendry bellows, but Sansa ignores him because Robb is tearing down the street towards them.

“Quick question- congratulations, by the way- how do you feel about-“ he doesn’t get to finish panting his question, because at that moment an equally exhausted Jon comes barreling after a small potted shrub that is escaping down the hill on a wheelie trolley-

“Is that a piece of-“ Marg begins, but is cut short as the little snapped off branch of heart tree flies off the trolley and rolls across the street. Jon, who has stopped running and is bracing his upper body on his knees as his chest heaves with exhaustion lets out a loud groan and hurls himself into moving traffic after it.

“Oh my god.” Sansa mutters, as Gendry flings himself into the fray after Jon, Arya appearing from thin air and leaping onto the roof of a cab to track the chase from the air. “I told you Vegas was a good idea.”

“Should we just…” Marg begins, and Sansa nods. They keep walking, and manage to make it to City Hall in decent time.

“There they are!” her father exclaims tearilly, lunging forward to embrace Sansa, but at the last minute decided to grab Marg too. After an awkward sort of strangly hug in which her father intended to proceed with scooping them off the ground but sort of half fell over, they went to greet their respective parents and siblings (those not engaged in the horticultural warfare on 75th).

“Shall we head in?” Mace asks, after the particularly sour Olenna makes a crack at Sansa’s dress eggshell coloured sundress (and Sansa very politely does not bash her to death with her shoe).

“Aren’t we still waiting on-“ Bran begins, but Robb choses that moment to stagger around the corner. His suit is torn at the knee and shoulders, and he looks as if he tripped and fell into the Serengeti. Loras follows closely, in a similar state of disrepair with half of his balloons popped (and dragging on the pavement behind him). A shell-shocked looking Jon and merrily prancing Arya appear next, pushing Gendry who is sitting dourly up on the trolley, cradling the now pot-less heart tree branch.

“I did something to my leg.” He informs them unhappily. “And I don’t care for it.”

“What happened?” Jeyne Westelring asks, ceasing her attempts to scrub Robb’s face with a handkerchief and beginning to examine the injured digit with her authoritive air of a ward sister. Gendry mutters something, and Arya cackles with laughter.

“He tripped over and got his leg caught in an open cab window.” She deciphers.

“You’re going to need to go to the emergency room.” Jeyne declares.

“After the wedding,” Olenna announces. “Everybody inside- Garlan, carry in Sansa’s brother, Willas, hold the door.” Garlan bends down to pick up Jon (who has given up and curled into the fetal position on the sidewalk, snoring softly), but stops short.

“Granny?” he calls, frowning.

“What is it?”

“Where are the brides?”

Willas comes around the corner, tucking his wallet into his jacket pocket.

“Across the street.” He confides, grinning.

Their families barely have time to see Margaery whistle for a cab before she and her fiancée tumble inside it. There is a long moment of pained silence, before he clears his throat.

“Granny, the jade vines ended up through the window of a dentist’s office. We should do something about that.”


	14. tommen/willas

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WARNING: CONTAINS REFERENCES TO SELF HARM AND SUICIDE
> 
> This is long… yeah. It started out as Sansa/Tommen, but ended up Sansa/Willas? I don't know what happened, but it's… long. 
> 
> (A World War One AU was inevitable, by the way)

14.

Tommen Baratheon is fifteen and a child when they get engaged.

The advertisement is not cruel or mocking, it simply states the facts in black and white, but she can almost hear Lady Olenna cackling with laughter and Margaery’s gasp of confusion. (She doesn’t want to think about Willas anymore)

“A good match.” Her father says quietly, while her mother praises her skill at coming away from her very first London season with a suitor.

_‘I had one before that’_ , she thinks callously, though none of them say anything, except Robb.

“You’re not really going to marry that boy, are you?” are the first words out of his mouth when he stumbles in the front door.

“Hello to you too, how’s Cambridge?”

“Sansa!”

“He’s a good match!” she shouts, surprising both herself as Rodrick, who nearly drops his telegram tray. “He’ll have a London townhouse and lots of friends and money and a good position!”

Robb doesn’t say anything, but looks at her with wide, doe eyes.

(She throws her book at him and runs upstairs sobbing)

* * *

 

Three years later, there she is.

The seemingly impenetrable barrier of time has slowly guzzled away until she is standing at the altar with her blonde groom (who is a good head shorter than her). She finds, through the swathes of oyster coloured silk and corsetry that she almost cannot breathe, though that is only when she sees Loras Tyrell’s face, and for half a second almost thinks it’s Willas.

“Congratulations, darling,” Marge beams, with a gentle kiss on her cheek. “He’s not coming.” She whispers.

“Good,” says Sansa, unconvincingly, as Margey squeezes her hand softly.

But the day is truly beautiful. She and her short groom dance, they eat the beautiful food from Winterfell’s kitchens (he standing all that way below her- why can’t she see past his height?) and she finds herself thinking that if she can’t have her perfect husband, she may as well have a perfect wedding.

But then Cassel’s son Jory comes running in, and whispers swallow the joyful atmosphere as the black cloud that has been looming over them for months claps thunder and tries to drown them all.

* * *

“Will you join up?” she asks Tommen that night, as he removes his shirt.

“I have to. It’s my duty as an Englishman.” He signs up the next day, with the throngs of young men who think they’re going to glory (because that’s what the posters tell them, but she can’t seem to rid herself of the feeling that that’s not what they’ll find in the corpses of German soldiers).

Tommen has been gone for five months when their daughter comes screaming into the world. She has a tuft of red hair, her father’s emerald eyes and the tiniest little fists that she waves about gaily.

“Faith.” She decides, and orders green wallpaper for her nursery, because if she puts her heart into green walls and dresses and her daughter’s unmistakable eyes, she will stop pretending they are hazel.

* * *

 

It’s a drizzling Tuesday when the inevitable happens.

Faith had been grizzling all night, and the mint coloured walls of her bedroom (where she had moved Fatih so to be closer on call) are beginning to feel like a prison. So she escapes to a teashop not far from their house.

There are so few society men left in England, that the shop is barely alive.

She looks as exhausted as she feels, and digs mercilessly into her éclair when a walking stick hangs itself on the chair opposite her and its owner sits down. With cream on her face and circles under her eyes, she bursts into tears.

“I would have gone to the front.” He tells her openly, gesturing to his stick. “I would have gone gladly and died.”

“Specifically?”

“Yes. For a life without you is none at all.”

“Then go to the chemist and feed yourself aspirin for dinner. Leave me alone, Willas.”

“I would die honourably, my lady.”

Instead of leaving, however, he passes her Garlan’s most recent letter (he and Loras are in the same battalion as her father, Jon and Robb) and they laugh themselves into hysterics because they miss their brothers so much and they can see in Garlan’s words that that’s exactly jokes they would have made or facial expressions they would have pulled.

* * *

 

She lets him meet Faith the next day, and the screaming baby gurgles happily the moment her tiny little body is put into Willas’ arms.

The way he smiles while he holds her green-eyed daughter makes her think vindictively of her husband for the first time since their betrothal. When she prays that night, she has to force herself not to ask God to let Tommen die.

After some initial awkwardness she and Willas become friends.

Most nights he and Margaery come to hers for dinner, and afterwards Marg writes letters while Sansa knits socks for the war effort and he stretches out on the hearthrug and dozes before the fire.

Rather than forcing her daughter into the confines of the nursery save for an hour before tea, her daughter is allowed a supervised reign of the house. When she learns to walk, she scoots on her bottom down the stairs and comes to flop herself over Willas (which is where Nanny will find her when it’s time for bed).

The news of Sansa’s father’s death makes her lip tremble every time Faith curls up beside Willas, but when she receives word from her mother that Robb has been killed, she stops allowing the Tyrells over for dinner. She ignores the letters from her mother and burns the ones from Jon, gives Faith to Nanny and buys her more toys so the nursery will be interesting. Sansa locks herself in her boudoir and watches the portrait of her family hang dustily on the wall (no one is allowed to touch it). Her father stares solemnly down at her, and Robb laughs merrily, while Jon tries to hide his smirk, and it leaves her wondering if she or her mother or Bran or Arya are next.

* * *

 

Bombs begin to fall occasionally in London, so she takes Faith and leaves for Winterfell.

“Cassel and Jory are both dead. We’ve no word of Theon, either.” Her mother recites, as she paces through the halls with her granddaughter clutched to her side.

“What of Jon?”

“I would not know.”

Robb’s wife, with whom Sansa had taken so fondly to, seems to cope with her grief by smiling all the time.

(She hears her crying at night though, in Robb’s old bedroom, and Sansa asks her mother to let her move to the estate’s lake house)

* * *

 

“Jon’s our oldest brother now.” Bran says, startling himself.

“I suppose he is, yes.” Sansa agrees.

“Are you sad about it?” he asks her, wisely. “I don’t think so.” She replies, but they’re British, so they don’t talk about it further.

* * *

 

Her mother has framed a portrait of her and Tommen’s wedding day and hung it in Sansa’s new abode. He stands half a foot below her and her eyes ignore her smile and remain sad.

_‘Why do you get to live,’_ she thinks, eying his frozen face with malice, _‘and my brother does not? Why, when nobody in your horrible unhappy family loved you as Robb was loved?’_

“It isn’t fair.” Says a voice from behind her, “But it is also not just.”

She gasps.

Willas smiles sadly at her. Loras’ injuries have aged him considerably, but he is still able to smile at her.

Neither of them says anything, because nothing needs to be said. They resolve to giggle like they used to, as they finish the unfinished business of ripping each other’s clothes off and tumbling into bed.

* * *

 

“Do I deserve you?” she asks him softly. He does not reply, but rolls onto his side so his face presses into her hip.

Rain pitters down gently against the lake house’s window, the meager light from the candle secluding them from the war and the world. The telegram is rumpled in her hands, saying words that neither of them has yet said aloud.

_‘My husband is dead’_ rings around her mind, as if the impact has yet to sink its teeth into her flesh.

“I wished and prayed so hard for it. I don’t think I should get to marry you after that.”

“Sansa,” he says, in a voice so soft she almost cannot hear him. She looks down, to where his hazel eyes gaze up at her from the pillows, like an open invitation to strike him down. “ _I_ deserve you.” He whispers, and she kisses him.

* * *

 

Fabric is rationed, and they’ve no time to save up their coupons if they want to marry right away.

She tears apart her mother’s wedding dress and Arya’s debutante gown, stitching them together with the help of her daughter, mother and sister in law. They marry in the Winterfell registry office, Jon (who is home on leave with three bullets in his body) limps into the room with her, the way her father did four years earlier.

Willas smiles dazzlingly, like hundreds of sunsets, and Faith leaps up and down in joy, cheering for the father she has known rather than the one that she didn’t. Her eyes remain as green as Tommen’s ever were, and Sansa never forgets the husband she killed from spite.


	15. willas

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this is late- I was out last night and watching my Mum try on seventy pairs of shoes today.
> 
> UPDATE 24/11/14: Please, send requests. PLEASE. I need HELP.

15.

“I swear, it’s cuter when my homosexual grandchildren do this.”

Willas wobbled, reaching for the solid table edge as his grandmother strode into the room.

“Thank you, Granny.” He muttered, steadying himself as he finished shrugging into his morning coat.

“Not to say that this is not an…appealing occasion.”

“An appealing occasion!” Garlan exclaimed, flouncing into the room and flopping down on Willas’ bed. “Wow, Granny. Tell us how you really feel.”

“I might do, if you don’t insist on blibbering like idiots when I’m trying to speak.” Pursing his lips in mock-chastisement, Garlan settled back onto Willas’ pillows, and Willas rolled his eyes at his immature-but-somehow-fully-grown-family-man brother.

“You may not be as boundary pushing as Margaery, nor as cute as Loras, but you have a certain silent integrity about you that makes this occasion… sentimental, for an old lady.”

“What about me?” Garlan cried.

“Thanks Granny.” Willas said, recognizing her emotion and going in for a hug.

“You’re my firstborn grandchild, you should know better than that.” She snapped, placing a hand on his chest to inform him he had overstepped.

“Right.”

“Here.” Silently, she passed him his cane and tugged his waistcoat into proper position, straightening his tie and buttoning his coat for him.

He had not spent much time around his grandmother since he was little, between his injury, her career and Margaery’s penchant for diplomacy and travel-ability that fulfilled Olenna’s family time quota. But the way she tutted and pushed some of his hair off his forehead- well, some things apparently didn’t change.

“Well, I suppose you’ll have to do. Except for one last thing…”

Snapping her fingers, one of her interns briskly entered, and presented a blue rose on a small velvet cushion.

“Yes. That’s perfect.”

The familiar colour made him frown slightly, until it hit him (exactly the same as when he’d first seen them through the fence).

“Granny…”

“Oh, shut up.” She said, grinning. “I’m old, not dead.”

Despite the nerves playing in his stomach, they shared a smile.

“I’m still here, you know.” Garlan complained.

* * *

He didn’t notice straight away (he was a bit too caught up with her breezy descent down the hill, her dress floating around before her and her hair trailing all down her back- oh, shut up, Willas), but as soon as they met at the alter, it all fell into place.

Ignoring the fact that his eyes were watering with happiness, subtly, they high-fived behind her boquet, and he flexed his pectoral muscle (without any effort. Not at all. Nope) to emphasise the flower.

“Looks exactly the way your eyes did the first time we met.”

“You’re a terrible poet,” she beamed tearfully, and rose onto her toes to kiss him. Smiling into the kiss, he dropped his cane and grabbed her waist, dragging her closer, her bouquet dropping as she flung her arms around his neck.

“Um,” he vaguely registered the register saying. “I don’t think we’re up to that bit yet.”

(They ignored her.)


	16. mya

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am SO SO sorry for how late this is- I'm still getting used to having two parents' houses and that makes finding time to write quite difficult. 
> 
> So I give you femlash bank-robber noir to make up for it! Enjoy :)

16.

They married on the side of the highway.

* * *

“GET ON YOUR KNEES!”

“AND PUT YOUR HANDS IN THE AIR!” Sansa shouted. Though she tried her best to mimic Mya’s forceful tone, her high voice was not nearly as threatening as her sawn off.

Across the room, Mya winked at her, and Sansa grinned. Bending over, as she was, in her leather trousers, tight knitted jumper and knotted neck scarf, her raven black hair framing her cheekbones, she was the most beautiful woman in the room.

\--

_‘Does my lipstick look alright, love?’_

_‘Not a smudge, darling.’_

_‘Okay. We’re off then.’_

_Cocking their shotguns, they clambered out of the car._

\--

Whimpering caught Sansa’s attention, and she glanced down at the little blonde wisp of a girl, cowering on the floor with the other occupants of the bank.

“Hey, there,” Sansa cooed, ducking down with her flowered skirts sweeping across the floor. “Don’t cry. We don’t want to hurt you.”

The girl looked up, eyes red with tears.

“You don’t?”

“No. So try not to do anything stupid.” Springing to her feet, she shot another round into the ceiling. “Don’t get cocky, people!”

“Got it!” She whirled around as Mya came dashing across the atrium, heels clicking on the marble floor.

Sansa reached out and caught the canvas gym bag Mya threw at her, and she giggled mischievously.

“Good job, baby.” Sansa grinned, and leaned forward to kiss her.

(There was some muttering from the patrons on the floor, but Mya fired her gun at the wall and they stopped)

\--

“We should get married.” She purred, stretching across the hotel sheets.

“Ha. Good luck with that.”

“No, really.”

“Yes, really. I’m _so_ sure they’d let us.”

“It doesn’t matter. There’s a pastor in Chicago I know who’d do it.”

“It’s not _legal_ , baby.”

“Neither’s that.” She said loosely, gesturing airily to the stacks on bills spilling out of a suitcase on the floor. Sansa tried to stare her down, but broke and laughed, rolling closer to kiss her.

“Buy me a ring and I’ll consider it.”

\--

It happened in San Diego.

She was lolling on the counter with her easy manner, nattering away to the cowering hostages as Sansa stuffed bills into the bag.

“…gonna buy a shit ton of champagne and have a bath in it. Then I’ll plate my gun with diamonds, and stud my toilet with crystals. And I’ll buy my baby a crown with sapphires to match her eyes.”

Sansa glanced over at Mya’s carrying tone, and winked, returning to her task when-

_“MYA!”_

* * *

“No, we’ll make it, I promise we’ll make it.”

“Sansa…”

“…beautiful wedding dresses and flowers- we can afford flowers, you know? I’ve been looking at the books. We’ve enough for Bran’s physical therapy and Ygritte’s uncle’s new house-“

“Sansa,” Tearing away her determined gaze from the snowflakes hurling themselves into the windshield, she glanced at Mya, failing entirely to ignore how pale she was, the sticky red blood smeared on her hands and seeping through her fingers. “I’m not gonna make it to Chicago, baby.”

“No, we have to, we _have to!_ ”

“We’re not going to have that pretty church wedding you want.”

“Yes we are! We’re going to have forever-“

“Baby, I’m dying.”

Lost to the highway that was tearing past their windows, she looked over at Mya, disoriented.

“Pull over,” she whispered. “And help me out of the car.”

Dragging her through the snow, Sansa rested her gently on the frosty white ground, hefting her onto her lap.

“I, Mya Stone, take thee Sansa Stark…” she began, her complexion almost as white as the snow behind her. Sansa plucked a flower from the frost beside her, and twirled it into her hair. “…in sickness and in health, till death do we part.”

She realised she was crying when a tear plopped on the hole blown in Mya’s leather jacket.

“I, Sansa Stark, take thee Mya Stone, to have and to hold from this day forth…”

Leaning down, she kissed her as softly as she could.

“Pocket…” Mya whispered, as Sansa pulled away.

She lifted a shaking hand to the auburn hair spilling from Sansa’s chignon, and wrapped it between her fingers with a tender smile, until her arm dropped and eyes grew glassy.

Sansa screamed.

She screamed and screamed, until her throat was raw and her jaw ached, and she fell into a hysterical silence.

“I don’t wanna leave you baby…” she whispered, twisting flowers into her hair, between her fingers, beneath her chin. “But I gotta run… I love you, I love you. I’ll always love you… you are the most cherished being I have ever known… one day we’ll be together again, I promise, my darling.”

She kissed her again and rose to leave.

_‘Pocket’_

Turning back, she reached into her wife’s jacket pocket, and pulled out a large sapphire set between two diamonds, set on a silver band.

_‘Buy me a ring and I’ll consider it.’_

“You got me in the end, baby.” She whispered, before walking away.


	17. tormund

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've been working on your requests, but I couldn't get anything out except for yet another 18th century Scottish AU with everybody's (second) favourite willing as Sansa's newest husband.
> 
> (Apologies for any inaccuracies in the phonetic spelling of Tormund's accent!)

17.

“You.”

“Jon!” Sansa exclaimed, jumping to her feet with a grin. She hadn’t seen him for at least a year, what with his education at the Wall and Mother’s newly imposed restrictions on his existence in the house.

But his gaze was not on her (well not for long, anyway), and glanced back to her new husband for half a second in confusion.

“Jon, what are you-“

But over the campfire, she spotted a woman who could only be his famed niece- _her_ niece, now, she supposed. Her hair was as bright as the fire that crackled between them, the way her hand snaked onto Jon’s arm in warning and she realised-

-too late, as her brother lunged across the firepit and toppled her giant of a husband in a flying tackle.

“Shit!” she screeched, as their angered brawling upended the bench they had been sitting on moments before, nearly tipping her into the fire. “Jon, what the bloody hell are you doing- oh, forget it.”

Saving the bottle of scotch they’d been sharing (to save it from going into the fire as well, and creating a towering inferno), she crossed to where Ygritte was watching in amusement.

“So you’re the sister-aunt.” She grinned, before giving a loud cackle. “Jesus, woman. What’s the bloody matter with you?”

“Me? What’s the matter with him?”

“Who? Jon or me Uncle?”

“Either? Both.”

“Well, I’m assuming Jon has taken it as a mortal slight upon his honour that my uncle and _protector_ \- who did try to disembowel him, when he first proposed marriage, mind- has taken his sister as a wife.”

She cast her a confused glance, briefly tearing her gaze away from where Tormund had Jon’s face smushed against the ground.

“He’s trying to become the alpha.” She translated, with a laugh as their positions changed and Tormund’s legs flew up in the air, Jon diving down on top of him.

Regretting more than anything the concept of the welcoming of family at one’s hearth and home- especially when she was _trying_ to have a wedding night, she marched around the fire. Delivering a series of swift kicks to her half-brother’s shoulder, side and then belly, she managed to unburden him of her husband, who lay sprawled on the ground, groaning.

“Oh, there, there, you big baby.” She teased, lowering herself onto the ground beside him and resting a hand on the side of his face.

“Shut iet, woman.” He moaned. “The lad's gawt a poounch awn 'im.”

“Aye,” she agreed, watching Jon slither over the upturned bench to where Ygritte stood, howling with laughter. “He’s got the Stark spirit in him, I’ll venture. Which, if I’m not mistaken, will be the same reason you did marry me.”

His eyes swiveled over to her, and his teeth began to glow behind his beard as he smiled.

“Weill. Who’d’a thought ma wee bawnny lass’ husband’d be the reeason I’da wead me owen wyife at awell.”

As usual, she understood only about half of what he said, but found herself smiling at his soft but fearsome manner.

“Yes.” She answered, simply, and leaned down to kiss him softly (ignoring her brother’s cries of protest in the background).


	18. daenerys

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm so sorry this has taken so long! Please enjoy xx
> 
> (Also, warning for awful medieval marriage laws)

18.

Everybody in Westeros knew of Daenerys Targaryen. The news of her captivity spread through the country like wildfire, hardly weeks after the Rebellion had officially ended.

Sansa had always though of her as a romanticized figure, sitting alone in a tower in Dorne, staring dreamily at the blue sky against the red sand, brushing her silver hair and waiting for a dragon or a prince to come and save her.

Though Sansa never thought she would marry her.

* * *

It had been simple enough; wait for Joffrey’s wedding to Margaery, and let her convince him to send her to Highgarden. (Maybe she would have been warmer, then, the thought bitterly as she burrowed herself further into her cloak, staring in reverence up at the great looming wall, behind which her stood) It hadn’t worked, no matter how hard she prayed, and by some spell or another, she found herself on a boat speeding to Dorne.

“It’s quicker than the roads,” Ellaria had told her, stony faced. “They won’t catch us easily.”

“Why did you bring me with you?”

“Oberyn had always planned it.”

“But why?”

She had stood up, at that point, and crossed back to the cabin door.

“Because he did not like the idea of another poor woman dying miserable in that place.” She answered tonelessly, before disappearing into the gloom, leaving Sansa alone in the sunshine.

Not that she was ungrateful. Joffrey was dead, the Kingslayer was still in Robb’s captivity, Cersei was doubtlessly falling to pieces. Her only regret was for her friends left in the capital, though surely they would not miss her overmuch.

* * *

The first thing she had done was to take a bath.

She scrubbed her limbs so hard they turned red, but felt at peace knowing that all the grime of King’s Landing was no longer embedded in her skin.

She rinsed her hair and let it dry while sitting on the sunny terrace, watching some children splash about in what she supposed were the famed water gardens. Beyond them, a dark shape soared over a hill- far too large to be any bird- and for the first time in a long time, Sansa thought of the Targaryen princess again, with wonder.

A maid came in to dress her in a gown cut in Dornish style, the sapphire blue fabric tight over her breasts and hips, and cut far too down for her likes (though, if all the women wore them, she supposed it might be nice to fit in a little bit. Not to mention how powerful the pronounced shoulder pads made her feel).

“I’m Arianne,” the woman introduced that night, after dinner, “father didn’t say anything, but since you’re here, we may as well be friends. Come, meet my cousins.”

The Sandsnakes were all pleasant enough (even the brash Obara), and made her briefly remember Jon, all those years ago. Though something about their manner, their loud friendliness reminded Sansa of Margaery, and a faint flicker of despair leaped to life inside her.

“… met Dany yet?” “Sorry?” Sansa asked, shaking herself out of her trance.

“Dany!”

“She means Daenerys.” Sarella interrupted, glaring at Tyene. “She wants to know if you’ve met her yet.”

“The Targaryen Princess?” she asked, shaking her head. “I haven’t yet. Though I’d always hoped to, as a child.”

“Well come on, then.” Arianne tempted, taking her hand. “Myrcella and I will take you to her. She’s probably by the water gardens.”

Hands caught between the two girls either side of her, she found herself being dragged down steps and through corridors, until the warm night welcomed them outside.

“There she is. Dany!”

There was movement from one of the pools, before a figure emerged from the darkness.

Rising from the water like a nymph or a spirit, she was pale against the dark night, the silver hair flattened to her back and breasts running in rivulets down her white skin. “Hello,” she said, with a soft smile, but Sansa was frozen, unable to speak.

* * *

Somehow they became very close friends. They might have done, even if they didn’t enjoy one another’s company so much, for they were outsiders in a place that, despite its calm easiness, was nearly as secretive as King’s Landing.

They would go riding, or swim in the water gardens, or read or sew or try and clothes and share secrets. Dany even seemed to approve of Sansa’s match with Willas, having met him and deemed him a very kindly man.

“I doubt it will happen, though.” Sansa admitted, one afternoon.

The sun that beat down harshly fell in rays over Dany’s pale complexion, filtered through a palm frond looming over them in the garden. Secreted away in the bow of a tree, they curled together in the tight space with surprising comfort.

“Why do you say that?” she asked.

“He’s in Highgarden, and Margaery’s in King’s Landing. As far as I know, she’d not said anything to him… and anyway, I’m here.”

“Is that such a bad thing?” Dany laughed, and Sansa instantly coloured.

“That’s not what I meant!” she cried, burying her face in her hands, as Dany’s torso quivered with giggles. “You know I love being here with you.”

There was a moment of stillness, during which the depths of Dany’s purple eyes grew hard.

“Do you?” she whispered. Something thick buzzed in the air, lighting all of Sansa’s senses and making her feel like a blazing star.

She didn’t reply- did she really need to?- as Dany’s hand daringly came to rest on her hip in a move that she might have taken as a sisterly gesture months ago in King’s Landing, but here in Dorne, she now knew better.

Dany’s body was soft and warm beneath her as she leaned up to close the distance. Fire burned through her- through them- and urgency seemed to pour in around them as Dany’s tongue snaked its way over Sansa’s teeth and her hands tangled in her hair and- and- and-

* * *

 “I don’t want to be here.” She admitted, some months later.

“Why not, my love?”

“I want to be at home, in Winterfell. With you.”

“I want to take back what is mine.”

Struck by a sudden boldness, she shot up and tossed the bed sheets aside, straddling Dany’s hips between her thighs and leaning forward to grasp her hands, pushing them back over her head.

“Let’s do it.” She whispered into the crevice between her ear and her neck. “Let’s make a rebellion.”

“Well, my darling,” she said finally, “with you by my side, I could do anything.”

* * *

They wed in the sept in Dorne.

It wasn’t recognised, in the rest of the Kingdoms, or by the old gods, and it wouldn’t be until the world suddenly became a lot more progressive.

“It’s alright, though,” Dany confided. “Because I love you enough for it to be our own law.”

“Our own law.”

In the black of night, they stood, alone and still at the darkened alter.

“Say your vows,” she whispered. “Your Northern vows, and I’ll say them back.”

In the still shadows of night, white mingled with red as the two women kissed to pledge their love.

* * *

They rode from Dorne with an army of soldiers at their backs, Drogon, Viserion and Rhaegal soaring in front of them, dark against the blue sky. Before them, the red sand seemed to roll into the distance, like a painting from a book in Winterfell’s library.

“It feels like a dream,” Sansa murmured to herself.

“Yes,” Dany agreed from beside her, “it does.”


	19. jeyne w

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> SO SORRY FOR THE DELAY  
> Again
> 
> (POTENTIAL SPOILERS: Usually, I don't mind Jeyne W)

19.

As a girl, she had always wanted to marry into the South. The knights and businessmen in well fitting suits and all the sparkling lights at nighttime, all that rubbish.

Though she was glad to be at home in the North again, after everything with Joffery and bloody Cersei, a little bit of her still hankered for what she had always dreamed of.

Though technically, she was meant to inherit a kingdom from her brother, not his wife.

But there she was, trundling in through the gates of Winterfell in a taxi, doubling back from the sleet-slippery ground in her high heels and her nicely cut skirt suit.

_‘Ah, shit.’_ Sansa thought, lifting her phone to the window and sending Jeyne Poole a blurry snapchat with the same caption.

* * *

It was something about the orange leather handbag, the exotic southern perfumes and lacquered turquoise nails that got her in the end.

Jeyne was nice and polite. It was almost like a blow had been dealt to her after Robb’s death at that… that massacre, and it seemed rather like she was flailing to re-straddle her life.

Which in all its horrible gloominess did let Sansa be rather outward, as opposed to her falling back into herself and letting the war and the significant lack of coronation.

In the true style of the winter queens of old, she and Jeyne got married in the godswood. Sansa wore brilliant white fur and wool, Jeyne reasonably less warm in her thin, rippling silk.

“This is pretty ace.” Sana grinned.

“Day one, then?” Jeyne replied, and slipped her fingers into Sansa’s palm.

* * *

It was lovely, to start with.

Until Bran got sick, anyway.

Nobody knew quite what was wrong, but it popped her blissful, honeymoon bubble like an enormous… dying brother sort of pin.

(And another dead brother was the last thing she needed.)

Fortunately, with Jeyne’s training as a nurse during the war, they didn’t need to hire an outsider to come in to their family and… be there.

Meera, in all her royal wife-liness, spent about twenty hours a day by Bran’s bed side, force feeding him Jeyne’s prescribed semolina.

“I reckon,” Rickon said doubtfully, on a poorly timed royal visit from King’s Landing, “the last time you heard about nurses feeding patients semolina was probably the Blackfyre Rebellion.”

“What would you know about it?” Sansa teased, kicking him gently in the shin. “I know lot’s of things.” He told her, haughtily.

“Yeah. The first husband has to keep himself busy, while his wife’s off running the country.”

“Oh, shut up, Sans.” He scowled, while she burst into hysterics.

* * *

“He’s just getting worse,” she murmured to Jon’s friend Sam, over dinner at his ne night. “I… love Jeyne, but she… I think we need a maester’s opinion.”

“I’m a little bit concerned that you haven’t sought one before.” He replied, as if slighted by her blip against his profession. “But sure. I’ll give you the name of a friend in your area.”

“He’s the bloody king, mate.” Ygritte snorted into her wine, “I think you can deal with it yourself.”

* * *

Jeyne seemed even more offended than Sam had.

“What do you mean a maester’s opinion?” she trilled. “Don’t you trust me?”

“Of course I do!”

“Then why are you getting somebody in?”

“Because Sam had recommended a second opinion. And it’s not like it could hurt, I mean- I love Bran so much, and after Robb and Mother and Father…”

Jeyne looked at her with reluctance, but nodded.

“Alright…”

But on the day of Sam’s arrival, a snowdrift blocked off the gates to the castle.

“Shit!” Sansa, who had been operating the castle in Bran’s absence, swore. “How long will it take to clear this?”

“At least a day.” Was Edric’s dooming answer.

Not to mention that Bran seemed to take a turn for the worse, and the entire castle felt like it was drowning in a shadow of gloom.

“Daddy…” she whispered, leaning her head against the stony replication of her father’s feet. “Help me. Keep Bran here with us. Please.”

She paused; fingering the flowers Jeyne kept adorning the statue’s feet.

“I… know you might miss him, but I can’t bear to lose any more of you. Is this… punishment? I know you wouldn’t have minded me marrying Jeyne if she hadn’t married Robb first. But it’s not that different from when you married Mummy after Uncle Brandon died.”

As if she was waiting for a response, she felt a swoop of disappointment when he did not reply.

With an angry shout, she kicked at the cellophane wrapped flowers, sending them sprawling across the wet, stony floor. She returned to her spot with a slump, willing herself not to cry, and moved to snatch the flowers off the floor-

“What the hell?” she muttered.

The stub of the mouth of a rubber tube, no thicker than her finger, protruded from the floor in front of Eddard’s catacomb. Around it the flowers disturbed the damp earth smeared over the cobblestones, but a distinct ring of a metal tank lay a few feet away.

_‘Wouldn’t it be heavy?’_ Rang the small part of her mind that wasn’t repeatedly shrieking _‘oh shit, oh shit, oh shit’_.

Running up and down the rows of dead Starks, she looked behind every statue, in every crevice and cranny, before she finally spotted the small tank of gas.

Sure, it was easy enough to lift, but down stairs and across the castle? No way.

“Shit, Sansa.”

Her head snapped up, and there stood Jeyne.

She was beautiful; especially the way the beam of her lantern haloed her extraordinary curly hair. Her face, however, was void of its usual smile, its warmth and the loveliness she and Robb had both known. In its place was nothing.

A blank sheet of… nothing. “Jeyne?” she whispered, surprised. “What are you... what’s the matter?”

“Nothing, honey. Except for the fact by lovely busybody wife has found the gas tube that goes into the royal apartments.”

“This is yours? What for?”

“I’m killing your brother.”

Sansa had to admit; she was very open about it.

“What-“

“Because they took my crown.”

“Who? What crown?”

“Pay attention! I was Robb’s queen! He had a crown made for me, and they had no right to take it. I _loved_ him!”

“Do you love me?”

Jeyne pouted, moving closer, but Sansa backed away.

“You’re terribly sweet, Sans. But it’s your brother I loved. And his crown I _adored_.”

The tank had felt heavy when she first lifted it, but when she swung it, she hardly felt it at all.


	20. gregor

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> POSSIBLE TRIGGER WARNINGS: rape, abuse. 
> 
> This is a (somewhat disturbing) Streetcar Named Desire AU. (It got away from me a little bit…)
> 
> I have studied in Lit this year, and found the character development (or lack, thereof) quite interesting, as well as the more recent request for a Gregor wedding (who has been handsome-ised for use of this fic!). 
> 
> This is not so much of a wedding as a marriage fic? I have not tried this style before and am interested to hear what you think- also, there is a Jon/Ygritte counterpart (not related to Streetcar) which I can put up in there is interest.

20.

“…I pulled you down off them parapets, and you loved it…”

It was the only bit of his speech that she registered.

Because she did, she did love it.

* * *

“It started when Theon came to stay. He had never been the same, not since Mother and Father passed away, Robb died, the boys and Arya went missing and Jon went up North to stay with Uncle Benjen. They had scarred him as it had damaged me, though he hadn’t had somebody like I had Gregor.”

“He was the man you were married to before Grandpa Will?”

“Oh, yes. Gregor was… well. We had met a few months after Robb and Mother had passed, in an Officer’s Club Margaery’s brother had gotten us invited to. He- well, it’s hard to describe somebody you’re in love with. Were in love with, really. He was very tall. That was the first ting I noticed about him. He was an officer, you know. A Sargeant Major in the Engineers’ Corps.”

“Was he handsome?”

“Oh yes. He was a beautiful man.”

“I’ve seen pictures of Grandpa Will- old ones that is.”

“How old is that, Cattie?”

“Oh! Not- not that sort of old- what I meant, was-“

“That’s quite alright, dear.”

“Don’t laugh at me! Gods, you’re meaner than Mrs Baratheon.”

“Dear me. That’s a title and a half. Well, to answer your rather rude question, Willas was beautiful in a gentle sort of way. Gregor was… quite majestic.”

“…eurgh! Granny! That’s revolting!”

“Like a warrior, you little deviant! He had dark hair and such a broad face. Oh, and arms as tough as anvils.”

“And he was an officer.”

“Oh yes, but I wasn’t blinded by all the brass. He was so…charming.”

“How come you ran away with Grandpa Will, then?”

“Well. That’s a bit of a story, love. Gregor- my Gregor, was so lovely, and caring. He had his moments of indelicacy, but all men do. Like I said, he was a warrior, trapped in an engineer’s body. He was restless, and sometimes he let it slip.”

“Granny…”

“Though it was mostly Theon’s doing. He was a bit of a… sensitive soul.”

“That’s not what Auntie Ygritte said.”

“He wasn’t when she knew him. She and Uncle Jon have history with Theon.”

“So what about Gregor?”

“Yes. Well, when Theon came to stay, he’d just lost his job at the school. I never even knew until Gregor told me later. Theon had an affair with a student. A seventeen year old boy. He was practically run out of town.”

“Ew! A student? That’s horrible.”

“I’ve seen the way you look at your Professor Mormont, love. I knew his grandfather, briefly in the seventies-“

“Yes, I know. Gross.”

“He was a looker, too-“

“ _Granny!_ ”

“When he got there he was so anxious. He had always been a handsome lad, but he was nearly petrified with terror that his age would begin to show and his looks would wither. Always hiding in the glow of a pretty paper lantern he’d bought- so dim. Told everybody he was my younger brother- he had the look, by description anyway. And he was so… jittery. Missing a finger, and a few toes, and a screw in tooth.”

“Oh God! Was that because of the war?”

“No, no. A boy called Ramsay Snow.”

“So Theon was gay?”

“He played for both teams, I suppose. I know he was always in love with my childhood best friend, Jeyne Poole. From day one, poor thing- I always doted on him, a bit. She liked him well enough, but never loved him back.”

“Oh…”

“Well, there he was. Bathing and flouncing around in his silk robe- all that finery left from Winterfell. And Gregor never had much for Theon’s type, so flash. He wanted the money of my share of your great Auntie’s house, and Theon and I, we had none… all I had had gone to Gregor. I was always honest with him, you know. But Gregor didn’t like him in his house, flitting around in his silly smoking coat and drinking all of Gregor’s alcohol. _‘Every man is a King! And I am a King around here, don’t you forget it!’_ That’s what he said. Theon and I would gang up on him a little. Like you and your mother gang up on your father.”

“Was he nice?”

“Who- Theon? Oh… more so after Ramsay, though never really nice. Kind, I suppose.”

“It all sounds…”

“Like a big mess? Oh, yes. There was a girl in town too, the sister of one of Gregor’s friends. Rowan, her name was. Laundry girl for the hotel, she was. Oh, and were they taken with each other! Sweethearts. Rather awkward- makes me wonder if they actually… but anyway, after Gregor found out about Theon’s past, he told Rowan, and that put that to an end. I never did know what happen, after I went to the hospital…”

“…Granny?”

“He told me. Theon _told_ me. I knew what Gregor had done, but… just the three of us! That’s what he promised. None of the nastiness that brewed before Theon got there, just him and me and baby makes three…”

“What happened next?”

“It had snapped him, what Gregor did. I- I sent him to the asylum… oh don’t look at me like that! What could I do? He wasn’t right and… it was what was done. The proper procedure- oh, I’m a- a- a- so-“

“When did you leave Gregor?”

“…the first time he hit your Uncle Robert.”

“How?”

“Theon made me promise that I would… before I had him collected. It was the one promise I actually kept.”

“And when did you meet Grandpa Will?”

“Nineteen fifty nine. He was nice.”

“I know.”

“But he never stopped being that. Not like my Gregor.”

“You were still married?”

“I was. Willas- I didn’t care, by that point. Willas was gentle, and I was… so tired.”

“Did you love him?”

“Of course I did.”

“And Gregor? Were you a virgin, when you met?”

“I was. But I could handle him. Why, on our wedding night- as soon as we got into the bedroom- he snatched off one of my slippers and rushed around the place smashing the light bulbs with it.”

“And you- you let him? Didn’t run, didn’t scream?”

“I was- sort of- thrilled by it.”

“Oh, Granny…”

“He brought me down off the parapets of Winterfell.”

* * *

Cattie waited still kneeling on the floor where she had slid during the speech, her hands still clasped in her Grandmother’s. The dappled afternoon sun was streaming through the window and into the silver hair of Sansa Stark.

“Do you love him?” she whispered. “Still?”

“Theon did say I had married a madman.” She replied softly.


	21. the great groom christmas festival (renly, oberyn, quentyn)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is a bit of a rambling fluff to no where- but the point of it still stands: MERRY CHRISTMAS!

21.

Sansa married Renly in the Godswood of Winterfell. She was rather put out that she’d not had the southern wedding she would have had if she’d married Joff, though Renly had been nice to come all the way up here (even if it was a social obligation).

Still, off she went to live with him in Storm’s End (it was all perfume in gold bottles and silk gowns and Manolo Blahniks and parties every other night), and while it was certainly fun being married to Renly, (the two of them did get along quite well) she was beginning to think that maybe abstaining from sex until the wedding night was less romantic that stupid, because (she nearly died of embarrassment when she told Margaery) he just _couldn’t_ get it up.

(Which was horribly ironic, between Joffrey and Sandor, and that one night with Willas, that the man she finally married was the one who couldn’t) Not that this put much of a strain on their relationship. It wasn’t a conventional marriage, like she’d always hoped for. But she saw the way he looked at Jensen Ackles on TV, and if he’d married her, clearly he didn’t want the world to know, so she just left it.

(She wished he’d come out to her, for they were very good friends, and if anything that was what strained their relationship more than the lack of sex.)

It had been an uncomfortably quiet car ride that ended as they pulled in to the gates of Riverrun for the annual Christmas Celebration.

It was hosted around the Seven Kingdoms, for the Wardens, Kings, Ladies, Lords and elite- a week of merriment and Christmas feasts, ending in a dazzling ball on New Year’s Eve.

It was lovely to see her Grandfather and Uncle again and she got embarrassingly teary when her family arrived.

(The Starks had never attended the soirée, much to Sansa’s chargin as a girl, but seeing as though she and Renly were here, and they’d not seen each other since the wedding over a year ago, why not?)

“I hope you’re looking after our sister.” Robb announced as he, Arya and Jon folded their arms and stared her skinny husband into a corner.

“Because if we hear you’re not-“ Jon began, but Sansa shoved through them and took Robb’s arm.

“Leave him alone, you lot. You’re all utterly awful.”

“Yeah, Jon. You’re so _utterly awful_.” Arya teased, imitating her voice, and shoving their half brother in the stomach.

She waved Renly goodbye as he went up to their room to change and take a nap while she and her siblings sat down for a cup of coffee.

(He seemed oddly familiar with Loras Tyrell, Sansa noted, as they met on the stairs and pounded each other on the back in greeting.)

* * *

 “Oh, but it’s cooollldddd, ooooouuuuuuttttttsssiiiiiidddddeeee!” Arya sang, as Sansa half dragged her to her bedroom.

“Who serves a fifteen year old Baileys?” she muttered, fumbling with the lock, but paused when she heard the sound of men’s laughter from her room across the hall.

She put Arya to bed and went back downstairs.

* * *

 Sansa was sitting by a window in the library on Christmas Eve as black SUVs pulled up and Martells began spilling out.

“Hello? Is anybody here?”

Rising silently from her alcove, she walked to meet Loras who nodded in greeting and headed to the Crime section. Sansa followed him blatantly, and when he sat down at one of the benches, she whirled his chair around and rested her palms on the table behind him.

“Sansa, you- you’re married!”

“My husband doesn’t seem to know that.” She growled into his ear, catching the lobe between her teeth. “Whereas you…”

“Get off me!” he shouted, pushing her so she landed on the floor in a sprawl, and she heard him thunder out into the corridor.

* * *

 Sansa didn’t look up from her iPad when Renly slammed the door behind him.

“Hello. Get into bed, you must be freezing-“

“Loras told me.”

She glanced up, and cocked her head. His hands were on his hips and his handsome face was red with anger.

“So you two are screwing, then?” when he began to gawp and stutter, she waved a hand. “Good. That means you can go stay in his room tonight. Not that I don’t love you dearly, Ren, but you might as well wake up in the arms of somebody you love like _that_ on Christmas morning.”

She returned to flinging little birds as pigs, and didn’t look up until half an hour after he had left.

* * *

She would have stayed in bed all morning and wallowed in her misery, if Rickon hadn’t come bashing her door down with three of his little friends.

“I’m sleeping.” She shouted into the pillow.

“No you’re not- is she, Shireen?”

“Rickon, maybe we should leave her-“ Shireen began, at the same time Edric Storm leaped screaming onto her bed with one of the Sand Snakes.

“That’s it, all of you out! Out, out, out! Just for that, you can wait another hour before presents, Rickon!” she shouted, throwing back the covers and shooing them all out of the room (pausing to grudgingly accept Shireen’s polite apology, and vaguely wondering whether she could trick her into somehow marrying her youngest brother to make up for his tendency to wreak havoc).

“Loreza! Where are you?”

From around the corner came a dashing man, with strong features and a warm, curling accent. His mustard yellow bathrobe was open over his chest, and Sansa felt her cheeks flushing as she glanced away.

“Daddy, this is Rickon’s sister, Sansa.” The little girl Sansa supposed to be Loreza all but shouted, leaping into his arms. Consciously aware that she was wearing only a t-shirt and knickers (and not even cute ones at that), and her hair was probably doing something awful, she smiled politely and backed surreptitiously into her bedroom.

“Oberyn Martell.” He told her, extending a hand and crossing the gap she had created.

“Sansa Stark.”

“Sansa… Stark?”

“Baratheon! I mean, Sansa Barathon. Sorry. Only been a year, I’m still getting used to it.”

He eyed her up and down once more, and smiled.

“Of course. Easy mistake. I’ll see you around, Mrs Baratheon.”

“Please call me Sansa. Mrs Baratheon is my sister in law and… that’s not something I want to be.”

He laughed and waved, departing around the corner.

Sansa closed her bedroom door and leaned on it, until Renly came back.

* * *

They gathered in the sitting room attached to her parent’s bedroom to open presents.

Bran and Rickon had banded together to give her a toy wolf that looked just like Lady had, with the softest fur. Robb had given her a pair of expensive shoes (“I gave Margaery the money and she gave them to me yesterday.” He admitted, when she eyed him suspiciously), and Arya had gifted her a large, gilt embossed book about the involvement of the Faith of the Seven in Medieval Society. Jon gave everybody hand carved wooden ornaments (Sansa’s was a squirrel) and told them (blushing furiously all the while) that it was important to support the local industry of small Northern towns, especially small shop owners. Mother and Father gave her a pair of earring to match the pearl necklace they gave her on her eighteenth birthday, and Renly gave her a large, heavy string of sapphires and diamonds.

(She kissed him obligatorily on the lips, and sighed to herself sadly when they parted)

“Sansa,” her mother whispered, beckoning her over to her bedroom as everybody began to disperse down to breakfast. “I have something else for you.”

“You didn’t need to!”

“Well I thought it might help.”

“Help?”

“You mentioned that you and Renly were… troubled, so to speak. It’s a special bond, between a woman and her husband, and I thought this might help things along a little…”

Sansa opened the box to find a blue negligee, the same colour of her eyes staring back ominously at her from the tissue paper it was nestled in.

“Thank you Mother.” She muttered in a high-pitched voice of embarassment, stuffing the box under her arm and running back to her bedroom.

* * *

“You seem sad.”

Sansa wished she hadn’t opened the door to the knock, and she smiled politely at Oberyn, once again caught in pyjama shorts and an oversized Christmas jumper.

“No, no. I’m absolutely fine.”

“You barely ate anything at lunch. You don’t seem like the type of woman to starve herself for the sake of her dress collection.”

“I’m just not feeling very well-“

“Loras tells his brother everything, you know.”

“Oh?” she prompted, panic rising inside her behind the courteous smile.

“And when Willas drinks, he gets gabby. I take it your husband isn’t in?”

She paused, debating whether to deny or slam the door, but his face was so soft and understanding that she couldn’t seem to bring herself to do either.

“Oh Gods, I’m such an idiot.” She groaned, leaving the door open and sinking down onto the foot of her bed with her head in her hands.

“Don’t say that about yourself.” Oberyn dismissed, closing the door behind him.

“You weren’t to know.”

“He was cheating on me… well… I don’t feel especially upset about it.”

“Are you angry?” he asked, kneeling down in front of her.

“A little…”

“Are you vulnerable?”

“I- I suppose?”

“Do you want to be on the same footing?”

“I- damnit, I do!”

“Well then.” He told her, standing up and shedding his shirt.

It was the brightest she’d felt all year.

* * *

 “No, wait, wait. Hold on.”

“What’s the matter, beautiful?”

“Aw. That’s cute. But no! I promised myself after Willas that I wouldn’t have sex unless I was married.”

“Fine,” he muttered, returning to pecking his lips around her navel, and spitting out words between kisses. “I Oberyn take Sansa as my briefly wedded wife.”

“Oberyn…” she groaned, swatting lamely at his mop of dark hair.

“Do you, Sansa, take Oberyn as your hurriedly wedded husband?”

“I… oh!” she exclaimed as his touch turned to a more sensitive place. “Oberyn I don’t know I… oh… oh! Oh alright then, I bloody do!”

* * *

 “Won’t your girlfriend be cross?” she muttered lazily, afterward.

“We have an understanding.”

Sansa snorted.

“I hope it’s not as shifty as it sounds.”

“In truth, it’s my nephew who’ll be cross.”

“Who, Trystane? Arya’s friend’s crush?”

“No, Quentyn.”

“Oh. Oh and you slept with me- you dirty bugger!”

“It’s what I like to call a meet-“

“If that’s a terrible pun, I’ll kick you out into the corridor naked." 

“Wouldn’t be the first time.” He muttered.

* * *

Feeling oddly refreshed from her impromptu and improper wedding to Oberyn, Sansa went to talk to Renly.

“You’re in love with somebody else, who you’re also fucking.” She began. “So I suppose you won’t mind if I discreetly do the same?”

“Have you met somebody?” he asked, and she laughed.

“It’s been a whole day, Ren.”

“Because Loras says Willas was told-“

“-that Seamus told him that Dean was told by Parvarti that Hagrid was looking for me?”

“What?”

“Oh, Ren, you sweet simple husband. Please shush.”

* * *

 “Er, hello?”

“Hello there, Quentyn. Your uncle has already fucked me.”

“What- I told him-“

He turned around to glare at his uncle further down the dinner table, who raised his glass at them, with a sly smirk.

“Not that anybody’s got dibs, because you’re a person, not a-“ he began, turning back to her.

“Rambling’s cute.” She told him. “I like rambling.”

He blushed.

* * *

 “Sansa, there are a few rumours going around-“

“What are they?”

Robb paused for a moment, before Arya broke in.

“That you’re fucking all the Martells.”

“Language!” Robb snapped.

“That’s not true. Well, I married Oberyn, and I haven’t slept with Quentyn yet. I’d like to, I think.”

When both her siblings stared at her dumbly, she shrugged.

“They do say that marriage changes people.”

* * *

 And at last, it was time for the New Year’s Eve ball. 

Sansa hummed as she slithered into her tight gown, brushing down the dove grey lace sleeves and skirt. She wore Renly’s necklace (“for one last bash, then”) and descended the stairs to the ballroom on her first husband’s arm.

“If you don’t dance as we agreed, I’ll be really cross.” She whispered in his ear, before kissing him lightly on the cheek and leaving him.

She met the wide-smiling Quentyn by the large Christmas tree, and turned to see Renly and Loras doing the same, by the suit of armour.

“Thank goodness. “

“Indeed.” He agreed, ruffling his hair anxiously.

“Shall we dance?”

“Aren’t I meant to ask that?”

“Were you going to?”

“Eventually.”

“Maybe now would be better.”

“Yeah, maybe it would.”

“…”

“Oh! Right. May I have this dance?”

“Of course, my dear.”

(People were staring openly at the four of them. Sansa smiled back, and stepped closer to Quentyn.)

* * *

 “Your brothers didn’t try and kill me.” He noted.

“That’s very good progress, for them.”

The moonlight that illuminated the Godswood shined on his dark hair and his solemn face. He wasn’t handsome, really. His face was serious and plain, and she barely saw him smile before they spoke. (She knew that he really loved her, because he smiled often and widely for her.)

“Good. It would kind of suck if they murdered me before we could get married.”

“We’re getting married, now are we?” she asked, laughing. His eyes widened as he realised his mistake.

“Bugger.”

“I’d love to marry you. Shall we?”

“You’re still married to Renly-“

“That didn’t stop me from marrying your Uncle.”

“Please don’t talk about that.” He whispered, his voice pained, and she laughed, wrapping her fingers around his and tugging him towards the Heart Tree.

“Come on, then.”

They said their vows with their fingers tangled, beaming widely beneath the white light of the moon.

“Seven hells, Sansa!” he exclaimed, later, when he’d managed to unbutton the back of her dress. She paused, glancing down at the blue lace that worked its way up her stomach and over her breasts, and grinned, tracing her finger over his jaw.

“It’s a special bond, between a woman and her husband.”

She whispered, and pushed him down onto the mattress before he could question further.


	22. thorin

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> HAPPY NEW YEAR
> 
> 1\. I promisepromisepromise that I have not forgotten about your requests, but after watching BotFA (and then shouting at some guy on the escalator afterwards…!) I wanted to fiX EVERYTHING EVER
> 
> 2\. This probably has as many themes, motifs, ideas and events as I would use for a five chapter fic, so apologies if it feels rushed or claustrophobic
> 
> 3\. Finally: a lot of background information is not covered in here, so I'd just like to let you know down at the bottom.

22.

When her father informed her of the marriage he has arranged, Robb punched him in the face.

Jon and Arya (holding back their brother) did not get as much of a chance to vocalize their opinions as Bran and Theon who broke down screeching, while Mama tried her best to comfort Sansa and stop Rickon from bawling in confusion.

Not that Sansa was so averse to being married- not at all. She was a Lady of Winterfell, and had been prepared all her life to be wed to a fellow of great prestige. She’d expected it to be somebody from the sweet and sunny Shire, even the young Mister Baggins, though.

She was not opposed to marrying a dwarf (though one did hear such dreadful things, and not only about their table manners), but she rather feared that a notoriously grizzly one such as this King Under the Mountain would not make such a dashing husband.

“Papa, I rather think you’ve overestimated my skill as a lady,” she began, “I… could live under a mountain, or I could be a Queen, but I don’t think I can do both.”

“Nonsense, Sansa. Mister Baggins tells me that his majesty is a good, honourable man, and that a lovely girl such as yourself will have no trouble-“

“You spoke with Mister Baggins?” she cried. “Why did you betroth me to a dwarf, then?”

“Mister Baggins was not disposed to take a wife-“

“Father, don’t force me to throw something at you-“

“Sansa- oof!”

* * *

After her apple-throwing tantrum, she had been confined into her engagement with no further protestations.

Leaving Bran in charge with a family friend, Uncle Rodrik (a singularly terrible idea as they would probably have a wonderfully large party in their absence and burn Winterfell to the ground), the family set off to the Kingdom of Erebor.

They travelled around the Misty Mountains in their rambling little carriage, somehow wound their way through deep dungeons and even spent one evening in a cave, a frightfully old cavern with damp dripping from the ceiling and primitive drawings scratched into the stone.

But at last, after the most stressful three weeks of Sansa’s life (oh, what she wouldn’t give for her little bench beneath the oak tree in their garden at home), the Starks arrived at Erebor.

The gateway was lined with dwarves, when they arrived, stony fellows who stood perfectly still in deathly silence. Of varying degrees of height and width, Sansa was careful to pretend not to be looking at anyone in particular (particularly those who leaned on lethal looking axes whose handles could probably do about as much damage as their blades).

At the head of this party stood three dwarves- all of who were long of hair, broad of shoulder, and solemn of face. Behind the King stood two younger companions, through judging by the way they wore their hair (almost as long as hers, _honestly_ ) and the gold circlets zigzagging their way through it, she supposed these men to be the two young Princes of Erebor.

The King himself was taller than the rest, dark hair and eyebrows looming above her as she curtseyed. He seemed more like a stone pillar than a person, and not for the first time since she was betrothed, she cursed herself for not being born an elf- at least their men were clean shaven.

“Your majesty,” she murmured, and he bowed, unsmiling.

“My lady Sansa.” His voice was so deep and cold; it almost struck a shard of ice straight into her heart, and wobbled in her bow (something she had not done since she was five years old).

This coldness nearly tripped her straight over the edge, and she was about to look to her mother (a sign of terrible weakness in front of her future people), when a deafening roar sounded sharply and suddenly through the hall. The two beaming nephews surged forward and pulled her into a crushing hug, pounding her back and squeezing all the breath from her body.

Disconcerted by such familiarity, she stood dazed as the other warriors she had passed upon her entrance crowded around her, tugging her this way and that, to crush squash her frame against theirs, cuff her shoulder her so hard that her knees buckled, or to hoist her off the ground in an embrace.

Nothing acted as a more alarming reminder of the startling height of dwarves compared to hobbits than being surrounded by a sea of them, all of them looking at her expectantly.

“Now, now, lads,” an older dwarf with a spectacular white beard chastised, when she tried to speak but only strangled noises came from her throat, “you’ve gone and frightened our new Queen.”

“Here, lassie,” the tattooed axe wielder spoke up, taking her gently by the shoulders and turning her to face him. “You needn’t be frightened- you’ll be one of us, in a few days.”

He was trying to be kind (exactly how many axes were strapped to his back?), so she tried her best to give him a polite smile. A sharp curve of his moustache indicated that he was returning the gesture.

Years from that point, she would learn that the forehead butt was a sign of affection among the dwarves (those with the best fighting hearts in Middle Earth). However in her first ten minutes of acquaintanceship with Dwarven culture, she was quite unprepared, and when Dwalin dragged her forehead towards his with force enough to knock one of her brothers off his feet, she totally and thoroughly blacked out.

* * *

The wedding went off without a hitch, which was to say that the ceremony was loud and messy and vulgar and confusing and, and, and… well.

If two dwarves had wed, it would have been before the throne, but as she was a hobbit, instead they were joined in the great hall.

She entered on her father’s arm, while her mother and a disgruntled Arya (who fit in with the dwarves alarmingly well) carried her train in a sort of guard, as the path made between the sea of dwarves closed as the moved, and if anybody stepped on the gown she and her mother and painstakingly woven, Sansa would have dropped her father’s arm and hit them.

It was pale blue, stretching for miles, and with a purple vest of draping silk embroidered with intricate flowers that set off her hair wonderfully.

(“Elvish,” Dís had sniffed with distaste, but smiled softly when Sansa emerged from her bedchamber before the ceremony)

Her husband had been waiting for her alongside Balin, who spoke some words of Khuzdul with a kind twinkle behind his eye.

Thorin had stared expressionless at her, though when he took her hand for the blood, his touch was nothing but gentle.

She repeated the harsh, Khuzdul sentences and donned the ugly geometric shaped ring (which was strangely light, for such a large ornament), and squeaked in surprise when Thorin kissed her upon the strange, Khuzdul command.

“Right,” she muttered, as they were swarmed with dwarven family again. “No headbutts,” she warned Dwalin, with a charming smile as she subtly danced away from him and around her new husband.

The feast lasted hours- food was thrown, plates were tossed, songs sung and tables stomped on, before at last, Bifur muttered something in his own strange, gnarled syllables.

“Quite right, Bifur!” Bombur shouted, “perhaps it’s time for our King and Queen to retire!”

At the table beside her, her husband muttered something in dwarvish (from his tone she assumed that had it been in common tongue, she’d be washing her ears out), and before she knew it, she was being hefted up into the air.

She had been prepared for the bedding ceremony in the Shire, where everybody was polite and her own size, and Robb and Jon and Theon and Papa could easily have been the ones to carry her off with dignity. With the dwarves, it was less so. The men of her family were muscled out of the crowd as Thorin’s men and the rather more spiky men of the Iron Hills jostled her and tore at her dress as they ran down the corridors to the marital chamber.

(Oh, this would be a long ninety years of marriage)

They deposited her surprisingly gently on her floor of her new bedroom (she smiled shakily at Bofur who doubled back to give her his scarf as means of preserving her dignity) before slamming the door behind her and cutting off the noise.

“Goodness.” She muttered to herself, wrapping the swathes of wool around her as she clambered to her feet.

“I apologise,” boomed a deep voice, from before the fire, and Sansa screeched as she jumped back. “I had rather hoped to slip away and avoid that.”

Her husband emerged from the shadows, having somehow maintained both his gracefulness and his clothes. “Do I frighten you?” he asked, with a frown.

“N-no.” she stuttered out, in a contradictory fashion.

“Obviously.” He replied, sitting down in one of the chair facing the roaring fireplace.

“Sit.” She obediently settled herself in the other unoccupied chair, and poked her toes at the roaring blaze. A proper husband would be kind and polite and take her gently in his arms and whisper sweet nothings in her ear, rather than grunt at her unintelligently.

“You drank no wine, tonight.” She started slightly at the observation, and realised with a blush that he was watching her from beneath his heavy brows.

“Er, no… I don’t like the fuzzy feeling.” He said nothing for a moment, but his lip began to lift in a smile. It suited him, she thought.

“Be that as it may, my men won’t trust you if you don’t, wife.” She paused for a moment, Mistress Mordene’s voice ringing in her ears _‘you must be the wife your husband desires’_.

“Of course, my king.”

“Please, Sansa. Call me Thorin.”

“Of course, Thorin.”

They sat in silence for a while, listening to the crackle of the fire and the distant hum of music from the hall.

“I suppose we ought to get on with it, then.” He observed, wearily hurling himself to his feet. She did not move except to curl her knees into her chest as she watched him tug his shirt over his head.

His dark hair spilled down the scarred surface of his back, and ( _oh_ ) she felt her mouth plop open in surprise.

“What happened?” she asked quietly, from around the wing of the chair. He looked back over his shoulder (all bearded, but _oh_ ), and he placed a stubby hand on a scar at his side.

“An anvil.” ( _Oh_ ) “This was from an orc’s spear... that one was from a fight when Dwalin got drunk… this is a sword… I don’t remember this one… that was when I tripped when I was a child… this is from the last battle… that-“

“Oh my god!” she exclaimed, as he turned around, and she scrambled back in her chair. A puckered blade had ripped the skin in the center of his torso, and rippled lines of gnarled flesh cobwebbed their way outward in a gruesomely fascinating twist of skin. He moved towards her again, with his odd way of gracefully ominous looming.

“Does it deplore you?” he asked, his voice deep and thick, with a soft something (vulnerability didn’t seem quite right) beneath.

Ignoring him, she reached out a tentative hand and ran her fingers gently over the gnarled surface of the scar, feeling the flesh lump and pucker. In a sudden movement, he reached down and lifted her out of the chair, her legs fumbling for purchase behind his back, her thighs pressing against the hard plane of his stomach. And… _oh_.

* * *

After the wedding and her family’s departure, Sansa grew more and more used to her life in Erebor.

Unlike a true queen, where she would have assisted in the running of the realm, Sansa was left to run the Mountain. She ordered dinners and decorations at feasts, checked figures and balances with Balin and saw to the comfort of guests. In her free time, she would wander through the library (nearly everything was written in khuzdul), or gaze at the few unburned tapestries. Sometimes she as Ori would knit together, and once or twice her absurdly young nephew (of age with her at thirty, which in the lives of dwarves and hobbits was very youthful) tried to teach her to shoot a bow.

Most afternoons, she would ghost the dark halls, slipping in and out of pools of light in the shadowy caverns cast by flickering torches. Occasionally her husband would join her, and they would walk in silence, but apart from that their only interaction was sitting beside each other at dinners, or in the marital bed (which was… very, very nice, but… distant).

After a few months, her husband and some of his men went to meet with the elves of Mirkwood leaving her in Erebor on her own.

In one of her indoor rambles, she came upon a set of stairs, which she followed. Another flight emerged from those, and another, and another. A dim light, whiter than the flickers of torches grew brighter and brighter as she ascended, until she found herself on a battlement.

It was so bright that she found herself slightly disoriented, and for a moment had to shield her eyes from the blinding sun. The sky was pearly grey and sad, the ground between her and the lake burned and ragged, but the air was so clean and fresh that none of it seemed to matter. Across the way, she could see the city of Dale, smoke curling from its chimneys and banners of colourful fabric snapping in the wind. For a moment, she thought about how nice it would be to wander amongst the stalls, speak with the people, drink cider and eat green vegetables. It could almost be like Winterfell.

* * *

She tried to get Bofur and Dwalin to go with her, but “under the King’s command” she wasn’t allowed to.

She cried herself to sleep like a child who didn’t get any supper.

* * *

Her husband and stupidly young nephews came riding in a month after that. Seeing them from the battlements, she ran down to greet them.

“Husband,” she greeted, with a formal curtsey, before flinging her arms around the nearest nephew. “How was it? Did you see the elves? What were they like? Did you have fun?”

“Yes,” Kíli told her gruffly, “it was fine.”

She glanced up at Fíli for explanation, and in response he turned around and ran his hands up and down his sides like a woman.

“What?” she all but screeched. “Tell me about her! Is she nice?”

“No! She doesn’t- yes but you’re not- you can’t- I won’t- hhnnngg.” He blustered, before running away. Fíli moved forward to give her a welcoming hug, and she plucked a dried leaf from his coat collar.

“You’re filthy- go clean up the lot of you.”

She twirled the leaf between her fingers as she down the corridor to her bedchamber. It was brown and flakey, but just days ago it must have been plump and fresh and spiraling down elegantly from the branches of a tree.

“What have you there?”

“A leaf.”

Thorin looked down at the crumbly thing in her hands, and to her surprise, his fixed frown slowly spread into a wide, toothy smile.

“I always forget the charm of hobbits. When they spend so much time around dwarves, begin to think they are forgetting their home, but I am always surprised.”

“Is that what Mister Baggins did?” she asked curiously, plopping herself down on the edge of their bed and watching as he began to remove his armour.

“Constantly.”

“I’ve never met him.” The wistfulness in her tone caused him to glance over.

“What makes you say that?”

“Oh… it’s nothing. My teacher, when I was little always told me that I’d marry another Hobbit. Like Mister Baggins.”

He had stopped his task and was staring at her.

“Is something wrong?”

“Do you wish you hadn’t married me, Sansa?”

_Be the wife he wants you to be._

“No.” she replied, gazing down at her leaf. She fixed her gaze on the cracked surface as he approached, until his stubby fingers came under her chin and pushed her face up.

“You’re a terrible liar.” He responded coldly.

“Please don’t mistake me,” she backpedaled furiously, “But I miss my family and Winterfell and the oak tree in the garden and my dog and sitting in the sun.”

For a terrible second, she thought he might shout at her, but instead he dropped his hand and continued undoing the straps on his breastplate as he walked away.

“I would be a fool not to notice the time you spend with my men.”

“They’re being kind. I don’t have many friends. The dwarven women here don’t like the things I do.”

“Don’t play me false, Sansa. If I were a different man, I may tolerate your behaviour-“

“And what is that supposed to mean?” she cried, dropping the leaf as she scrambled back on the mattress. “Is that really what you think of me?”

“I don’t know you!” he roared abruptly, whirling about ferociously, “What else am I supposed to think?”

“That I am a good and honest wife, because it is the truth!” she shouted back, scrambling to her feet so she loomed over him, hoping it would help convince him to listen to her for once.

“A good wife would love me properly.” He snapped back.

“Well it’s not my fault you’re so thoroughly unlovable!” she cried, the words tearing themselves from her breast before she could stop them. “God, Thorin! You’re like one of those horrid statues by the gates! All stone- and I suppose your heart is too, for I’ve tried to work my way into it, but you’ve given me nothing but silence and vile accusations. I’m your _wife!_ Heaven knows how you managed to get any dwarf to follow you, when you are so despicably unlovable!”

“I’m not some puncy elf who can prance around and win your heart!” he bellowed back, “You should have put that to rest before you married me, but you didn’t because you’re just a stupid little girl with stupid dreams who never learns!”

The door slammed behind him like a cannon shot, and she froze, slowly curling in on herself until she found herself crouched over on the mattress.

“And none of you are to speak to my wife!” came the faint bellow from the strategy room.

Sansa began to weep.

* * *

She made sure to lie very still, so when he came back to bed, he would think that she was asleep.

He didn’t come back.

* * *

In the months that followed, she found herself more and more homesick. Not only did she miss her new friends (who nod nervously to her at feasts or in the halls), but found herself growing more and more homesick.

And she began to realise that when she missed her father, she also missed Dwalin, and when she missed Jeyne she also felt sad at Ori’s absence. And Arya and Bran and Robb and Jon and Kíli and Fíli- she felt sad for all of them. She spent days on the battlements, staring longingly into the sky until a dour Ironhill dwarf told her she was banned from doing so.

She found herself growing to resent her cage, though she could never hate the dwarves, no matter how hard she tried.

Especially not after she met Bethsda.

Sansa rather liked the dwarven women, for their fierce courage and determination to be equal to dwarf men. They liked her too, she hoped, and though they could be pleasant, they would never have enough in common to be close.

Bethsda was a mother of five who was determined to spend as much time caring for people as she possibly could, and Sansa immediately felt affection for her upon their introduction. After her banishment from the outside world, she spend most of her time by Bethsda’s fire, helping her polish brass and gold and hearing about the ‘old days’ of Erebor before the dragon.

(Which also had the benefit of being able to shut her husband’s righteous mouth as he began to explain things to her because she was just a stupid little girl who didn’t know)

* * *

When it had been ten years since the Battle, there was a commemorative feast. Sansa had spent months in advance meeting with goldsmiths and weavers and cooks and decorators, occasionally running things by her husband, unless it could be avoided.

By the time that guests began to arrive, she really didn’t have time to greet them all, but donned her crown and smiled anyway.

Dwarves from all over Middle Earth came to kneel before the King under the Mountain, the men of Dale and the Elves of Mirkwood as well.

(Thorin refused to glance at her, on her chair at the base of the throne’s dais)

Gandalf the Grey, she was told, would be late, and by the time the sun was beginning to set and she couldn’t feel her backside anymore, Bilbo Baggins arrived.

She had not seen another Hobbit for eight years now (Arya was married to a blacksmith, ironically enough), and nearly leaped out of her seat to embrace him, but her husband did so first.

“Master Baggins!” he grinned, bounding forward to hug him. “It has been to long.”

“That is certainly has,” he agreed with a genial smile. “You’ve not changed one bit, Thorin.”

“And neither have you, my old friend.”

“You look better, now it has all been returned to the vaults.”

Sansa glanced over the edge of the walkway. She tried to imagine gold piled so high that the ceiling glowed faintly yellow, as Bethsda had described, but instead felt terribly dizzy.

“Oh, now.” Bilbo exclaimed, glancing over Thorin’s shoulder and smiling at her. “You must be Sansa.”

“This is my wife,” Thorin confirmed, as if he were touring a nature exhibit in a large city.

“Mister Baggins,” she greeted, smiling, “what a pleasure it is to meet such an old friend of my husband.”

“And you, Sansa. It is truly a pleasure to meet Lord Stark’s daughter.” She returned his grin and clasped his hand, until Thorin cleared his throat pointedly, and she glanced up at his unmoving face.

“Oh for goodness sake- if you’ll excuse me, Mister Baggins. I ought to go assuage my husband’s twisted mind and lock myself in a dungeon for an hour or so where no man can corrupt the sanctity of our _loving_ marriage.”

She didn’t stop when Thorin growled at her.

* * *

 

For the feast, that night, she had had her maids find her a tumble of blue fabric that she had spent hours shaping into a suitable gown for the occasion.

She knew that by dwarven standards of femininity she was plain, but the fabric was loose and billowing while it clung to every curve, brought out her eyes and made her hair ripple like fire. She tamed it into braids like she had observed other dwarves do, and bedecked herself with cuffs and armlets that matched her crown.

(And if anybody looked at her, they would know that even if she didn’t wield blades and axes like them, she had a fight in her heart as much as a home)

* * *

“You look different.” He noted, without looking at her as they sat side by side at the head table.

“Do I?”

“I just said you did.” She glanced over at him, and snorted under her breath.

“I’m a hobbit, Thorin. I am not suited to the war between us. If you can look at me now and honestly call me a silly little girl who never learns, I will not challenge you to find even the tiniest flicker of warmth in your heart for me.”

They sat in silence for a while, watching the elven king Thranduil dance with a clockwork precision, at least two feet above everybody in the room.

“Do you really miss the sunshine?” Thorin asked, at last.

“I do.”

“Sansa?”

“Yes?”

“Thank you.”

They said nothing for the rest of the night, but the next day she was invited to ride out with the kings and leaders in their party.

* * *

She did not ask about speaking to other dwarves, nor did she ask permission to ride out at her leisure. She was the queen, after all.

For a little while, Thorin joined her as she ghosted the halls, exchanging forced conversation until it began to flow.

(She was right about him looking better suited to a smile)

As the warmer weather set on, they began riding instead of lurking. Sometimes they would go to Dale, and Sansa would buy hair ribbons in the market place and braid the hair of all the nearby girls. Sometimes they would walk amongst the trees (and once he even picked a flower and tucked it behind her ear).

“I should apologise,” he began, once, but she placed a hand over his mouth and would not let him finish.

“For that means I shall have to apologise as well, and then we’d both be fools.”

* * *

Fifteen years into their marriage, Sansa gave birth to their first child. The three of them (though Thrúrin was loath to leave behind his two cousins, who were similarly unwilling see him leave) left to venture to Winterfell.

Leaving her son and husband inside with her family, Sansa slipped out of the kitchen door.

The oak tree was smaller than she remembered, but otherwise the same. The wood still curved just the way she recalled, the leaves the same colour and the bench garden still peaceful and serene. Settling on the little bench at the foot, she leaned back against the trunk and felt the same, soft knot of wood pressing into her back, though now it made her smile.

“Your brothers abandoned their death threats the second I put Thrúrin on their knees.”

“I suppose we’ll have to pay them off with more children over time. I don’t imagine they’ll give this one up any time soon.”

“Are you propositioning me, Lady Oakenshield?” he teased, sitting down beside her and snaking an arm behind her back.

“You know me well enough that you shouldn’t need to ask.”

The chirping of birds and rustling of leaves washed over them, and she would have been quite content to stay there for the next few hours.

“Was I so cruel? To not have courted you properly?”

“You were a king. A pigheaded, barrel-minded king. Not that much has changed, mind.”

“You’re so mean to me.”

“That’s because I have to be kind to everybody else to make up for your scowliness. And anyway, you did court me properly.”

“Eight years late.”

“Head like a cask of wine, I tell you.” She teased.

“I still feel the need to bring you flowers and secretly hold your hand when your parents aren’t looking.”

At this, she shifted out of his grip and turned to face him, tangling her fingers in the ends of his hair.

“My love, I would not want you to. Our story would be none the less special to me if we had fallen madly in love on first sight.”

He smiled softly and leaned forward to kiss her.

“Not that I would object to some surreptitious hand-holding.”

He laughed then, and reached around her to take her hand, twining their fingers together and swinging their hands back and forth.

“Oh, Lady Oakenshield. Holding your hand is something I’ll never stop doing.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thorin wanted to marry a hobbit because he trusts Bilbo and to him hobbits represent a kindness and purity and a lack of greed, which is why he thought a Thorin/Sansa marriage would be tip top after his gold sickness. 
> 
> This is a weird blend of Middle Earth and Westeros culture, which is similar in some ways and astoundingly different in others, so… apologies.
> 
> They DO end up on an even footing in their relationship, it just takes them a while to get there. 
> 
> And lastly, Lady Oakenshield would NOT be Sansa's official title- it's more of a pet name when they become a whole functioning unit.


	23. cersei

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> SERIOUS WARNING for dubious morality, mentions of abuse, spousal manipulation, violence and major character death.
> 
>  
> 
> (Sidenote: some serious valonquar action as well)

23.

Sansa began to think, after a little while, that she had married a swirling hurricane.

But that’s what Cersei was, after all. She had torn into Sansa’s life and ripped it all up by the roots- her innocence, her happiness, her family, and let it fly free from the vacuum to all ends of the country. She’d sucked in Joffrey and his brutes of guards, Ser Illyn, her father’s execution, and ground up everything Sansa had loved like a blender, leaving a festering corpse of her life.

(That’s what she liked to think, anyway. It meant that her family were scattered throughout the Seven Kingdoms, and in one of the realms, she might find happiness again)

For everything that Cersei was, a mother, a queen, a manipulator, a femme fatale in Armani, her greatest weakness wasn’t the way she overestimated herself, but how badly she needed to be loved.

* * *

King Joffrey Baratheon tripped off the battlements of the Red Keep. Sansa did not push him; though she wished she had. She had been with Cersei when it happened.

“Mummy told me,” she confided, her voice glassy as her stomach ached, “but I always thought it wouldn’t be so bad. I- I thought maybe I’d start getting a figure, but-“

“Wait until you have children,” Cersei snorted, “life isn’t a Hugh Grant movie, Sansa. You will learn that, some day.”

“I wondered if I can have unrestricted search, just for today? I promise I won’t message my family. I’d just like to Google menstruation-“

“Your grace!” The door smashed open and Ser Lancel came dashing in, too skinny for the padding in his suit, panic wrought on his face like a mask.

“The King… the King…” he panted, as Cersei shot to her feet.

“What? What is it?”

“The King is dead.”

If it weren’t for Cersei, Sansa wouldn’t be here. She would have gone home, with her Daddy and Arya, and Mummy would have hugged her and kissed her forehead and told her _‘it’s alright, I know it hurts, but you’ll feel better soon’_. But Sansa had gone to Cersei with her father’s plans; she’d thought Cersei was nice and kind. But she was Zola to Sansa’s Steve Rodgers- a growing weed that corrupted everything she thought was right.

And it was that moment, as Cersei tore screaming from the room to prove Lancel wrong, to rise Joffrey from the dead (hah) with her power of will that Sansa knew how to bring Cersei crashing down.

* * *

 Ten years later, Sansa was twenty-three, and the most Beautiful Woman in Westeros (2015). Cersei was forty-five, and no less beautiful when she donned her crown and sat the throne.

It had taken all the years since Joffrey had died, and every ounce of her strength to work her way into Cersei’s inner circle. She had known she’d earned Cersei’s trust when they’d tried to marry her to Tyrion ( _“Oh, you wouldn’t- Cersei, please!”_ ) and she had yielded.

One drunken night, she had put the little things she had picked up from Cersei to use.

Maybe it was the fact that Tommen had just graduated from Middle School, and was one step closer to inheriting the throne from Cersei, or the fact that there had been a picture that had gone Tumblr famous, of Cersei wearing no make up and looking like death itself over a cup of coffee, but either way, she had been vulnerable enough to accept.

Two years later (a great statement of Westeros’ slow ascent into modernization), a Sansa became a Queen.

* * *

Initially, it all went to plan. Dorne, the Reach, even the Riverlands had been relaxed about gay marriage for centuries. Some parts of the North were a bit more backwards, but the region had ultimately voted in favour. Some individual groups had thrown their hands up in the air, bellowing about sins even if they weren’t religious, but for the most part, the people took it all in their stride.

“We should bring my brother up here,” she observed, one day.

“What on earth for?” Cersei replied, not looking up from her paperwork.

“He’s my only family left. And his sister is a queen- it might be nice for him to see how I’ve ended up. You know, that I’m happy.”

“I thought you never really liked him.”

“I didn’t. It’s sill though… I’ve matured now, and I should be ready to mend my fences with him.” Here she spun around, teasingly, gently nudging Cersei’s chair with her toe. “Don’t you want me to put the ghosts of my past to bed?”

“I just want you to be happy, darling.”

“Do you?”

Cersei spun in her chair slightly and looked up, worried.

“I do, I promise, darling.”

“Then why won’t you let me bring my brother down here?”

“I- alright.”

“What? Really?”

“Go on then. Call his unit, see if they can’t spare him for the Queens of Westeros.”

“Thank you!” she cried, ducking forward and kissing her gently. “Thank you, love. Now get on with your work, after I’ve gone and disturbed you.”

* * *

Thanksgiving came around, and Cersei and Sansa did a spread in King’s Landing Weekly.

Cersei wanted it in their private dining room, and Sansa wanted them in cable knits in the snowy Godswood.

Snow melted in Cersei’s hair, and she looked beautiful as the camera shutter snapped and clattered.

* * *

Jon clambered down from a troop bus on Christmas Eve.

Sansa, who had been waiting with Meryn and Dontos at the depot, broke all rules of propriety and protocol and she squealed and ran forward, tackling him in a hug.

By the time Cersei had spared him an odd smile and left them be (“Oh no, love, you should go to the soup kitchen.” “What are you talking about? I don’t want to go without you. It was your idea.” “Yes, but we can’t not show. And Jon just got here, I can’t very well abandon him.”) Jon had been taken away and battled into a bath, clean clothes and into a chair opposite Sansa’s in front of the fire.

“It’s not as cold as home used to be, but I always find the palace so draughty.”

“Sansa?”

“Yes?”

“Why did you bring me up here?”

“Because you’re my brother. And I need you.”

“Really? Sansa… do you mean that?”

“Mean what?”

“That we’re siblings?”

“Of course we are!” she laughed. “I know I’ve never been very familiar with you, but… well. You’re the only one I have left.” He smiled sadly at her, and she grinned back, pouring him a cup of hot chocolate.

“You’ve changed a lot.”

“I suppose I have. You have too, if I’m not mistaken.”

“I guess.”

“Well. We’ve a lot to get on with, haven’t we? Now, how do you feel about your position at the Wall?”

“It’s… not great. I’m starting to have doubts about the Wildlings.”

“Oh?”

“They don’t need to be oppressed. We could set up a program that would help to orient them into Westerosi society if they want to come live down here. They’re people, not shadowcats.”

“Hm. That’s a very good point. But other than that, how do you feel about the Watch?”

“Oh, er, the food’s not up to much, but my mates a great. The duties aren’t very hard. Not that there’s really much to do, except from keeping the base from falling down.”

“Would you move, if you could?”

“If I was posted somewhere else.”

“Because there’s a reason I’ve called you down here.”

“Oh?” he murmured, furrowing his brow.

“Daddy was executed thirteen years ago, last July.” She murmured, leaning closer. “I wanted revenge on Cersei then, and I want it none the less now.”

“What?” he doubled back, brows raised in shock. “Isn’t she- that’s your- what?”

“Don’t be so surprised,” she hissed, “you really think I’d marry somebody who killed our father?”

“She’s behind that?” “No, it was Joffrey. But everything she’s done? She deserves this. And I’m so close, but I need someone loyal close to me. He’s in Tarth for now, but Jaime is hers, I don’t trust him, and he’d shoot me if I looked at her sideways.”

“Seven Hells, Sansa!”

“You loved our family, didn’t-“

“Sansa, stop.” Leaping up from his chair, he backed across the room and folded his arms. “This isn’t you, this isn’t who you were raised to be. I can see what you’re doing to me, and what you’re doing to her, and if I can, other people will notice too.”

“No they won’t-“

“No! You say she deserves it, but right now, you’re no better than her.”

With that he left, slamming the door behind him, leaving her standing on the hearth rug, alone.

* * *

In 2018, the Riverlands marched on the Westerlands- the feud that had never really died out since the infamous Red Wedding.

To their credit, the Westerlands returned in full force, and sent the Tyrells to invade the Riverlands.

The North marched in to reclaim the Riverlands, and the Eyrie went with them.

As usual, the Dornish stayed out of it, and Stannis (who still believed himself the proper heir, over Tommen) began him campaign to usurp them from the Iron Throne.

(That was probably Sansa’s fault, releasing Cersei and Jaime’s secret)

Poor Tommen was rather upset, having inherited his throne at the age of nineteen, only to have the entire country burst into war. Not that his distress was anything compared to Cersei’s hysteria.

Because everything Cersei had worked so hard for was in peril and she was becoming so paranoid that she had even begun to suspect Sansa of sabotage. Sansa was subtle in directing her away from this perilous realization, blaming her paranoia on the death of her father, Jaime having married Brienne and Tyrion still at large.

She had been intending to spare Tyrion, when this was all over, and make him heir to Casterly, but her little spies had told her that under the alias of Hugor Hill he had raped a prostitute in the Free Cities. She didn’t care about another mentally challenged white guy and his crimes- for that he could have what Cersei was planning for him and more.

Cersei had predictably eaten it all up, leaning back into Sansa and letting her wife wash her hair.

(These exchanges mostly took place in the bath. It was when Sansa knew she was deep in Cersei’s trust)

Her wife aged five years in a month, her spun golden hair paling with peppered strands of silver. Cersei responded by having it cut into a bob, and that was when Sansa knew Cersei Lannister was truly crumbing to bits.

It didn’t feel as good as it should have.

* * *

 She denied it for a long while, but honestly began to question what she was actually doing when the Tyrells came to court. It was meant to prove their loyalty to the Westerlands- and by extension, the throne.

Margaery and Willas were both enigmatic, charming and incredibly likeable, but Sansa would not allow herself to fall in love with either of them, for the sake of her plan. (That might have been her undoing years ago, and she would have flung herself into the arms of one of them “just like something from Love Actually”, but Sansa had literally made herself a Queen for this, and that wasn’t something to be cast aside lightly)

* * *

After the Bolton Conquest, Sansa had single handedly controlled the demise of the tentative peace in Westeros, and the second civil war of the Twenty First Century exploded.

Bolton had become bored with his blood soaked claim, and had teamed up with the Freys to march south. (Probably for more room for his little psychopath to run around in) With the Riverlands already cross about the desecration of their territory, the soldiers had rallied behind the leading military strength and joined the Boltons in their march to the capital.

The people had been running around barricading their houses and stockpiling tinned food- those with relations further down the continent packed their bags and left their front doors hanging open.

Jaime and Brienne came to the capital, intent on the its defense of the Stormlands and Westerlands, the latter of whose troop numbers were dwindling significantly. Sansa didn’t like having the two retired Generals in her way, especially not Jaime, who needed only to glimpse at Cersei to see that everything was falling apart.

Sansa was standing on the battlements Joffrey had tripped from, all those years ago, when Cersei found her.

The attack was coming painfully soon -the Queens knew that. The people did too. The rush to evacuate was over, and for once the bustling city was painfully quiet.

“Everybody is against me,” Cersei whispered, not looking away from the unnervingly still skyline, “The Tyrells. She’s got her claws in Tommen, and Myrcella’s wrapped up in the Dornish. They’ll never let them go. They already have my first boy.”

_‘Your first monster’_ Sansa thought bitterly.

“All the commanders hate me. They think you’re the humane one.”

_‘I am’_

“And Jaime, with his hideous cow. I should have had her murdered the moment he looked sideways at her.”

She turned and gazed at Sansa, fearfully.

“You won’t let them hurt me, will you Sansa?”

“Cersei!” Sansa gasped, grabbing her wife and pulling her close, “I would never let them hurt you. I promise.”

The wind was bitter and cutting, just like Sansa’s lies.

* * *

The gunfire began at lunchtime the next day. Not that she was so inclined, but if she wanted to see what the First World War had been like, she could have looked over the garden walls.

They were just outside the city, thuddering shells and bullets back and forth, explosions booming in the distance like fireworks. With binoculars, the soldiers looked small, like the little figurines in Night at the Museum.

She used to watch that film with Bran after school when the bullies had been bad, because it was his favourite. She felt a faint hum of something in her chest, but she didn’t quite recognise what it was.

Brienne was run off her feet campaigning for peace, and Jaime was running around trying to keep troops away from the city, in a rather ironically contradictory kind of way, seeing how they were married. Sansa kept herself busy sending food and to the front and to the city, the people of Flea Bottom, the barracks and even the bankers in their high rises clamoring at her feet with their love. She’d only chosen to keep that task because it allowed her to remain in the Keep and Cersei under surveillance.

Granted, she managed to hold it together reasonably well, until Tommen was killed.

When Joffrey died, Cersei had screamed. When Myrcella was in ICU after her injury, Cersei screamed. When Tommen was killed at the front, Cersei ran out of scream.

Instead, she pulled a pearl handled gun from the waistband of her designer trousers and shot the messenger in the face.

Boros and Meryn had doubled in front of Sansa, knocking her away from the long strategy table as she fell to the floor. Loras did the same to Margaery, and she and Sansa exchanged a terrified glance under the table.

_‘Shit, I think this has been a mistake’_ it seemed to say, _‘can I go home now?’_

Maybe Margaery would let Sansa go to Highgarden with them, when this was all over.

Boros and Meryn fell. Sansa clapped a hand over Margaery’s mouth when Loras crashed to the floor.

Brienne, in a final ditch effort to be noble tried to pick herself up, but Sansa flung her free arm towards her like a backstroke and clutched at her ankle- she was their last chance for peace.

With a clatter of heeled boots, Cersei was gone.

“Get that wound bandaged and keep up your correspondence with the allies.” She instructed Brienne, tossing the First Aid kit at her (which sailed past her- of course she couldn’t catch with a bullet in her shoulder). “Pod, look after the dead and take care of the King’s fiancée. And lock this door behind me when I leave. I don’t want her back in here.”

“Your grace you can’t-“ he began, but she tugged Boros’ gun from his holster and left the room.

* * *

Servants and soldiers were either cowering in doorways or lying on the floor. Blood was smeared on the walls like a set from Being Human. That was how she found her wife, by following the trail of dead people.

“Cersei, put the gun down.” They were back where Joffrey had fallen, and Cersei did not listen.

The two sergeants- boys, no older than Bran must have been either were killed by the bullet, or from the fall.

“They took my boy,” Cersei begged, her voice gone and replaced by a tearful whine so sharp it was almost silent. “My baby boy.”

“They didn’t take him, Cersei. The Boltons did. Please, darling, put it down.”

For a moment, she seemed tempted, until a resolve hardened behind her eyes.

“No!” she shouted, pushing a cold brazier in Sansa’s direction.

By the time she had clambered over it, Cersei had disappeared up the old stone steps to the roof. Sansa gasped and hurried after her. The gun was cold against the small of her back.

This wasn’t the grand death she’d had planned. Cersei was supposed to be executed for the murders of Robert’s kids that Joffrey had ordered, but she had escaped. Then for Tyrion’s attempted murder, until he’d cocked it up. And then for the brutal manhunt that had resulted in the deaths of hundreds of people with dwarfism, or ugly children.

‘The people’ had become such an alien concept when Sansa had been planning this- she used to want them to love her, so when she married Joffrey, if he killed her it wouldn’t be in vain. But now their adoration seemed like an absent hat-tip, and more and more of them seemed to be dying because of her- soldiers, civilians, Tommen, Loras, those bastards Boros and Meryn.

And for what- vengeance for he family? Because Joffrey, the one who had her father killed was dead. The Boltons were untouchable in the North, and what could she do with the Freys? Would Robb and Mummy and Daddy even want this from her?

It was too late for the philosophical battle, though. She had to follow through, to make sure the deaths of all those innocent people were not in vain.

“Cersei, stop!” she shouted. The wind roared in her ears up here, there were no walls to protect her. In the distance, canons boomed and men screamed, and her voice barely carried to Cersei’s ears.

“They killed my boys, Sansa. They killed them!” Cersei flung her arms around, waving the gun with a reckless abandon as she teetered near the edge of the roof. “They did!” she screamed, “they did, they did, they did-“

“No, Cersei. I did.” Cersei powered ahead, but came to a slow halt as the words registered.

“What?”

“Not Joffrey. I didn’t kill him. I do wish I had, though.”

She’d thought about monologuing the whole plot like a Bond villain, but had decided long ago that that was a terribly tacky idea. It all came out though- when she started, she just couldn’t stop. Cersei’s mouth had dropped open at some point, her hair hanging daintily in line with it.

She snarled and began to lunge when Sansa was finished, but Sansa whipped the gun out from her waistband, and Cersei got quite silent after that.

“You- you-“

“And now, of course, I have to kill you. I’d rather not do it myself, but Daddy always told me that the man who passes the sentence should swing the sword. Our way is the old way and all that. Anyway, do you mind terribly? I just need you to kneel or stand up straight or something?”

Cersei didn’t move, frozen with shock.

Sansa tried pulling the trigger, but it wouldn’t move. Frustrated, she frowned down at the weapon, twiddling it between her fingers. She found herself saying sorry, like a proper psychopath, before she found the little switch.

“Never fired one of these before.” She said by way of apology, before aiming the gun again.

This time, Cersei charged, knocking her backwards. The gun skittered out of her hands, and gripping Cersei’s wrists in a desperate effort to stop her wife bashing her head in with the butt of the pearl handled Beretta, Sansa looked up into her face.

Cersei was a hurricane, a whirling storm of power and emotion and strength, but at that moment, the only thing on her face was rage- a total malice.

Getting her bearings in the struggle, Sansa crooked her knee and rammed it into Cersei’s groin, using the moment of disorientation to flip them over so she was pinning her to the stone roof.

“You took everything from me,” Cersei snarled.

“And you took everything from me.” Sansa replied. “Let’s call this even.”

Then a gun fired.

A force like tiny little punches slammed into her- her shoulder, her chest, her stomach, her arm. Screeching in pain, Sansa toppled backwards. Her head hit the concrete and everything buzzed blurrily.

Somewhere in the distance, she heard silence- the guns had ceased. It seemed kind of fitting that she should die while the soldiers stopped. Except blood wasn’t pooling on her clothes. The wounds burned and she could feel them beginning to bruise already, but whoever had fired what she presumed were blanks at her knew what they were doing and were trying not to kill her.

With great effort, on her aching limbs, she propped herself up.

It took a moment to distinguish them.

Cersei had told her that they’d been totally identical when they were children, and for a moment it was almost true again. Jaime and Cersei struggled for a moment, he in a mad fit to make her stop the relentless trail of destruction that she had been scattering behind her since birth, and she in a crazed moment of burning rage, burning on a fuel that had almost drained away.

"Stop, Cersei, stop. Stop, stop, stop.” He begged, almost like chant as his hands, somehow in their brawl came to her throat-

Sansa let out a high-pitched scream as Cersei’s face darkened and her eyes bugged. And then she dropped.

“Cersei-“ Sansa gasped, wheeling onto her hands and knees and dragging herself across the stone. “Cersei.”

Instead she almost collided with Jaime’s boots.

“Brienne managed peace.” He told her, stonily. “This was self defense.”

“It- it wasn’t even revenge.” She whispered, Cersei’s crumpled body barely within reaching distance. “They died for nothing.”

Maybe Jon had been right, but for Sansa it was too late.


	24. loras

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Notes at the end this time!
> 
> WARNING: this idea was really cute in my mind, but I don't know how well I carried it off? I really, really hope that nobody gets offended, but if you do, let me know and I'll take it down. I don't imagine anybody would, but I'm always a little nervous.

24.

This was all for a date to prom.

Sansa had been dreaming of her prom night since she was eleven years old. She had a Pinterest board dedicated to it since the days when Pinterest had been an actual corkboard.

As well as three scrapbooks.

And an art folio.

And after the debacle that was Joffrey and her homecoming experience (which she preferred not to think about, thank you very much), Sansa was quite keen to have a nice prom with flowers and a stunning dress and flawless date that she would remember when she was ninety.

“So… _quite keen_ is an understatement?” Her brother asked, raising an eyebrow.

“Shut up, Robb!” she snapped, smacking him with her fork.

“Hey no fair!” Rickon whined. “Mum, why does Sansa get to hit people and I don’t?”

“She doesn’t.” their mother replied forcefully, with a meaningful look at Sansa.

“Sorry.” She huffed at Robb. He poked his tongue out when their mother turned away, and she pulled a face in return.

“If it helps,” Jon began, “maybe if you focus on finding a nice date, it’ll eclipse some of the rougher details.”

Eyebrows around the table rose, but Jon continued to eat, nonplussed.

“Is anyone gonna say anything about the windows?” Bran muttered. Sansa looked doubtfully at their half brother, thinking of his slightly-nutty girlfriend who smashed eight windows at school with her _elbow_.

“Yeah, thanks Jon.”

“So… where was this going?”

“Oh, yes. Daddy, I need four hundred and seventy dollars.”

Eddard Stark, former Secretary of State and Revered Justice, choked on his beer and snorted it across the table.

* * *

From across the parking lot, the football team was piling out of SUVs, like thugs from a Baz Luhrmann film. Admittedly, their obnoxious entrance was a little off-putting, but she’d already bought a very expensive gown.

And besides, if she chose right, it would be a little nice to have a boyfriend. Somebody to bring her hot chocolate when she was on her period, and cuddle her during lunch break and be cuter than Joffrey with his stupid wormy lips.

She almost sounded like she used to, before _him_.

But she wouldn’t make that mistake again. She’d pick her target painstakingly, scrupulously, and launch the romance.

In the end, she selected Loras Tyrell. He was from a good family. She was friendly with Margaery and had met their grandmother. No way would any child reared in Olenna’s presence ever turn so much as a finger to a woman.

Yes, his elder brother was in a relationship of five years, and the oldest was off somewhere doing something that Sansa wasn’t quite sure of, but if he wasn’t here to take her to prom, she didn’t really care.

“Hi Loras.” She grinned, leaning against the locker beside his. He frowned, his pretty sandy brow dipping.

“Hey… Sansa, isn’t it?”

“That’s me. Look, have you got a date to prom?” He began to chuckle pityingly, placing a hand on his hip.

“Oh, sweetheart-“

“Then who are you going with?” she asked, raising a brow. He paused, as if considering it for the first time.

“I… if I did, it would just prom, okay?”

“Just prom.” She repeated, straightening the strings of his hoodie, with her most coquettish grin.

“No… other stuff.”

“I promise not to fling myself across you. It’s just a few dances and a cup of spiked punch. It’ll be a laugh.”

He smiled like he’d been jabbed with an acupuncture needle.

* * *

 By lunchtime, the school was buzzing with it. It wasn’t every day that two beautiful rich people who’d never been out with anybody so long as they’d been in that zip code had a date of some description.

“He says you’re not his girlfriend.” Margaery began, sitting down next to Sansa on the bleachers. “So what are you doing with my brother?”

“His colouring will compliment my dress shade.” Sansa replied absently, not looking up from her laptop screen.

“Why?”

“He’s not going to be into you.”

“I can deal with that.”

“I mean, he’s never going to want to date you.”

“Oh well?”

“Sansa, it’s _just_ a prom date-“

“I know, Marg! _Just_ a prom date. No more. I get it-“

“Hey Sansa.”

He was looming over her, all six feet of tall burly beautiful football player.

“Loras.”

She noted the group of snickering boys behind him, his teammates mainly. Renly Baratheon looked sour across the field, and her brothers in the huddle of Loras’ support group looked particularly unimpressed.

“I know I said it’d be just the prom, but… does coffee after school sound like a good idea? We can… get to know each other.”

He looked a little put out, but very determined. She still maintained that he was a good investment.

“Sure.” She smiled.

Beside her, Marg’s jaw dropped.

* * *

When his barriers came down a little, he wasn’t not-fun to be around. She actually enjoyed the time they spent together, and though he complained vociferously when she dragged him places like the cinema, the pier, Build a Bear, he still smiled when he thought she wasn’t looking. He even let her choose him new clothes.

It was two and a half months of coffee dates and colourful coats and fresh white paper cups and Marg being uncomfortable for some reason and Loras curling up with Sansa on her bed to watch Orange is the New Black.

As he left (with a friendly hug) her mother was waiting behind her, lips pursed.

“Loras…”

“He’s nice, Mum.”

She put so much meaning behind the reassurance that the lines around her lips just deepened.

“As long as you know what you’re doing.”

* * *

Sansa spent five hours in the bath, straightening and then curling her hair, running make up brushes along the curves of her face, painting her nails and spritzing herself with perfume.

She slipped herself into the four hundred and seventy dollar dress. It was swathes of floating teal blue skirts, a bejeweled bodice with a sweetheart neckline and matching pointy shoes.

“Oh, yes.” She breathed, when she allowed herself to look in the mirror.

“Sansa! Loras is here!” her father shouted from below.

It was time for her descent.

* * *

It was not disappointing. They danced to a few songs, the white gardenias on her wrist glowing prettily under the crepe paper lanterns. She had no interest in the crown (therefore didn’t to worry about last minute frantic networking like Margaery) and instead smiled and politely declined dances with random boys and let her sister send Sansa’s victorious picture to Joffrey.

She wasn’t even embarrassed when she pretended not to see Jon boosting Ygritte out of the window as she clamped the school’s Wi-Fi modem to her chest.

It was a little off-putting, though, when she found her handsome perfect prom date with his tongue down his own sister’s boyfriend’s throat.

“What, didn’t you know?” Marg asked, when she found Sansa hyperventilating in the bathroom. “Loras is gay.”

“Well I know that now!” she screeched. “Oh… oh, I’m such an idiot.”

“You’re not an idiot. Just… displaying slight tunnel vision.”

“No, I’m an idiot.”

“He feels really bad, Sans. Can he- oh! Hello there.”

She glanced up as Loras edged into the room, peeking through his fingers.

“Why are you doing that?” she snapped. “Nobody’s ever naked in the public part.”

“Don’t want to risk it.” he replied, ears turning red. Marg chuckled as she slipped out.

“I don’t understand how you could do this, Loras.” She murmured sadly. He frowned and began to object, but she spoke over him. “It’s two lousy syllables! _I’m gay._ I wouldn’t have cared. We’re friends. At least.”

“You’re not… offended? That I lead you on, I mean.”

“Well of course I’m offended. You told me I was sexy. If I’d known you didn’t mean that…”

“Aesthetic, love.” He grinned, holding out his hand. “Come on. Margey’s probably got her crown. I suppose I can spare a dance.”

“Ew, I don’t want to go back out there.” she whined. “You should dance with Renly.”

“I’m not ready to do that just yet.” He muttered, diverting his gaze to his shoes.

“Margaery invited me to your little after party yesterday. What’s going on with that?”

“Garlan and Leo are driving us to Vegas.”

“That’s quite a journey.”

“We’ve got a case of champagne in the back of Garlan’s Jeep.”

“Well…”

“You can come if you’d like. Ren and I would love some company.”

“Would I be third wheeling?”

“Not at all, Sans. You were my beard for nearly three months. We’re practically family now.” Sansa laughed.

“Okay, but don’t let me get too drunk.”

* * *

Everything hurt. Her eyes hurt. Her face hurt. Her head hurt. Her mouth felt like it was stuffed with cotton wool balls and something was digging into her back. Oh was Renly’s elbow.

“Oh god.” She muttered, pushing herself up. She was wearing a hotel robe, and her four hundred and seventy dollar dress was in a puddle on the floor. “Oh god.”

“Stop it.” Renly groaned. “Stop making word noise.”

“What the hell happened last night?”

“I’m glad you asked.” Margaery’s perky voice rang from the corner. All three occupants of the bed screamed.

“See, you three got totally sloshed on the ride over.” She continued, somehow being impeccably groomed and not even a little hung over. Sansa was fully clothed, at least. That wasn’t much in comparison, but it was something.

“And then Loras and Renly tried to get married.”

“Hnnnng. Kudos, babe.” Loras muttered.

“But that didn’t happen because Ren had a drunken existential crisis and Leonette found him sobbing under a park bench.”

“Is that why I smell like a homeless person?”

“And then this happened.” Marg finished, extending a strip of photo booth pictures for their inspection.

 _‘Little White Chapel Weddings’_ was scrawled garishly across the bottom in curly white script. Loras was duck facing in most of them, and Sansa was grinning toothily, her eyeliner smeared into panda eyes.

It took her a really long moment.

Then she screamed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some further canon that I couldn't fit into the story:
> 
> -Sansa and Loras get an annulment a few years later. They have hysterical running around calling each other husband and wife.
> 
> -Loras and Renly get married for real pretty much straight after that. Sansa is is Loras' female-best man. 
> 
> -The three of them remain very good friends forever! 
> 
> -Despite common rumour, Sansa and Loras never once kissed. This was speculative, mostly since she enjoyed snogging his eldest brother in public and the general public really did not know how to react to this.


End file.
